OpenAI is considering eventually helping other businesses tap into the data centers and physical infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence, potentially creating a new revenue line that could offset some of the ChatGPT maker’s immense costs.
The service would be loosely inspired by the success Amazon found renting out its spare cloud computing capacity to companies, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said in an interview Wednesday. OpenAI is not “actively looking” at such an effort today because it’s focused on securing computing capacity for its own operations, she said. But “I do think about it as a business down the line, for sure,” Friar said.
In recent years, OpenAI has gained expertise on how to design and set up data centers to optimize workloads for AI. The company now sees an opportunity to capitalize on that know-how. It also wants to become more directly involved in the process rather than rely solely on third-party vendors. “If all we do is buy from others, all we’re doing is giving them our IP because they’re learning how to build AI infrastructure,” Friar said.
OpenAI has raised tens of billions of dollars to pay for advanced chips and data centers to build and operate cutting-edge AI services. The company is also working with SoftBank and Oracle on an ambitious infrastructure venture called Stargate, with plans to build massive data centers in the U.S. and abroad.
Even that may be a drop in the bucket. CEO Sam Altman told reporters this month that people “should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars” on data center construction in the “not very distant future.” Altman said OpenAI is working to “design a very interesting new kind of financial instrument” to help support that effort, without providing details.
Historically, OpenAI has leaned on other partners, including backer Microsoft and Oracle, to help finance the cost of building out data centers. Now, the company is also seeing banks and private equity firms “come to the table” with debt financing to support its infrastructure initiatives, Friar said.
“That’s the next path we’re going down,” Friar said. From there, she added, OpenAI is “trying to be thoughtful” about whether there are “other interesting, novel ways we could do that beyond debt.”
OpenAI remains an unprofitable business, which limits its ability to finance data center projects without outside capital. However, the company has seen revenue grow at a fast clip on the strength of consumer and business demand for ChatGPT. OpenAI generated $1 billion in revenue in July, marking its first month hitting that milestone, Friar said.
The company is also in early talks about a potential sale of stock for current and former employees at a valuation of about $500 billion, Bloomberg News has reported. Its previous valuation stood at $300 billion in a $40 billion financing round led by SoftBank.
Of that $40 billion, OpenAI was responsible for lining up $10 billion through a syndicate of investors. Friar said there was so much investor demand that OpenAI ended up raising $11 billion, bringing the total funding amount for the current round to $41 billion.
