Key Points
- OpenAI’s annual revenue is “well more” than the reported $13 billion, according to CEO Sam Altman.
- Altman is confident that the U.S. will meet spending commitments exceeding $1 trillion, dismissing critics’ concerns.
- Altman hinted at the possibility of reaching $100 billion in revenue by 2027.
- He denied specific plans for an IPO next year but acknowledged it will likely happen “someday.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently stated that his company is making “well more” than $13 billion in annual revenue. He sounded a bit annoyed when pressed on how OpenAI will pay for its massive spending commitments.
Altman’s comments came during a joint interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the Bg2 podcast. Host Brad Gerstner brought up reports that OpenAI is currently bringing in about $13 billion in revenue. While that’s a lot, it’s a small fraction of the more than $1 trillion in spending commitments for computing infrastructure that OpenAI has made for the next decade.
“First of all, we’re doing well more revenue than that. Second of all, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer,” Altman retorted, which made Nadella laugh. “I just — enough. I think there are a lot of people who would love to buy OpenAI shares.”
Altman added that many critics who express “breathless concern about our compute stuff” would be “thrilled to buy our shares.” He said that while he doesn’t often wish OpenAI were a public company, it’s appealing when people write “ridiculous ‘OpenAI is about to go out of business’ [posts].” He said, “I would love to tell them they could just short the stock, and I would love to see them get burned on that.”
Altman did admit that there are ways the company “might screw it up,” such as failing to get enough computing resources, but he insisted that “revenue is growing steeply.” He explained, “We are taking a forward bet that it will continue to grow, and that not only will ChatGPT keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing, that AI that can automate science will create huge value.”
Nadella also backed him up, claiming that OpenAI has “beaten” every business plan it has ever given to Microsoft as an investor.
When Gerstner later speculated that OpenAI would reach $100 billion in revenue in 2028 or 2029, Altman countered, “How about ’27?”
At the same time, Altman denied reports that OpenAI plans to go public next year. “No no no, we don’t have anything that specific,” he said. “I’m a realist, I assume it will happen someday, but I don’t know why people write these reports. We don’t have a date in mind, we don’t have a board decision to do this or anything like that.”
