Asger Risom
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pushed back sharply when asked how the company can justify more than a trillion dollars in long-term compute commitments.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pushed back sharply when asked how the company can justify more than a trillion dollars in long-term compute commitments while generating only a fraction of that in yearly revenue. The exchange came during a podcast interview with investor Brad Gerstner, where Altman made it clear he’s tired of the criticism around the company’s massive capital bets.
A tense exchange over trillions in commitments
Gerstner raised what he called “the single biggest question” surrounding the company: how a firm with roughly tens of billions in annual revenue can commit to $1.4 trillion in future infrastructure and chip deals.
Altman cut him off. “If you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer. Enough,” he said, adding that demand for OpenAI equity remains strong despite the concerns.
He also disputed Gerstner’s revenue figure, without offering a replacement number, then argued that the people sounding alarms online would line up to buy shares if given the chance.
Betting the company on steep revenue growth
OpenAI has signed a series of enormous, multi-year spending deals for chips, compute, and energy with companies including Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, and Amazon. The latest — a $38 billion partnership with AWS — was announced hours before the interview.
Altman defended the scale of the commitments. “We do plan for revenue to grow steeply,” he said. “We are taking a forward bet that it’s going to continue to grow.”
He pointed to the company’s product roadmap — from ChatGPT and AI video tools to consumer hardware and cloud services — as the engine that will support future revenue.
Altman pushes back at “bubble” critics
The surge in AI spending has intensified debates about whether the sector is overextended. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said Meta is “front-loading” compute and may end up overbuilt for a few years. Investors like Michael Burry have raised red flags about the industry’s massive capital needs.
Altman said he’s unfazed. “There are few times I wish we were public, but when people write, ‘OpenAI is about to go out of business,’ I’d love to tell them to short the stock — and see them get burned,” he said.
Nadella backs OpenAI’s strategy
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who appeared on the podcast with Altman, laughed at the exchange and said that from the perspective of a partner and investor, OpenAI’s execution has been “unbelievable.”
Altman acknowledged the risks but said the company has no choice but to invest aggressively. “If we don’t have the compute, we will not be able to generate the revenue,” he said. “We might screw it up. This is the bet we’re making.”
Sources: Bg2 Pod, Reuters
