OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said the company is making “way more” than $13 billion in annual revenue, and seemed a little testy when asked how it will pay for its huge spending commitments.
His comments came during a joint interview on the Bg2 podcast between Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the partnership between their two companies. Host Brad Gerstner (who is also founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital) mentioned reports that the company is currently generating around $13 billion in revenue, a considerable amount, but dwarfed by the more than $1 trillion in spending commitments for computing infrastructure that OpenAI has made for the next decade.
“First of all, we’re making a lot more revenue than that,” Altman said. “Secondly, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer. Just…enough. I think there are a lot of people who would love to buy OpenAI shares.”
“Including me,” Gerstner interjected.
Altman then added that there are critics who “speak with great concern about our computer equipment or anything that would be happy to buy our stock.”
In fact, he said that while there are “not many times” when he wants OpenAI to be a public company, “one of the rare times when it’s attractive is when those people write ridiculous things like ‘OpenAI is about to go out of business.’ [posts]“I would love to tell you that you could short the stock and I would love to see you get burned by it.”
Altman acknowledged that there are ways the company “could screw it up” (for example, by not having access to enough computing resources), but said that “revenue is growing rapidly.”
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“We are betting that it will continue to grow, and that ChatGPT will not only continue to grow, but that we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer devices business will be something significant and important, that AI that can automate science will create enormous value,” he added.
Nadella, who laughed through much of Altman’s response, also claimed that OpenAI has “exceeded” every business plan he has given to Microsoft as an investor.
Gerstner returned to the topic of OpenAI’s revenue and IPO plans later in the interview, when he speculated that the company would reach $100 billion in revenue in 2028 or 2029.
“How about the 27th?” Altman responded.
At the same time, he denied reports that OpenAI plans to go public next year.
“No, no, no, we don’t have anything that specific,” Altman said. “I’m a realist, I assume it will happen one day, 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. I just assume that’s how things will eventually go.”
