OpenAI’s Sam Altman Seeks $7 Trillion To Enter The AI Chip Market!

It’s no surprise that Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), has been in full throttle over the last few years.

While companies have been engaged in the field for a while, the most notable contributions have come from the GenAI industry leader, OpenAI. The company boasts an incredible record of reaching 1 million users in just 5 days after launching the popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT!

It then went on to break another record, when it reached 100 million users in just two months after launching, which made it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. In fact, the AI industry is full of amazing stats and facts!

Over the following year, the company garnered many headlines and generated large amounts of funding, particularly from Microsoft, which invested more after its initial amount of $13 billion.

Now, the company is on the lookout for more funding to achieve another dream that could see it become a leader in more than just AI-related software.

So, what is OpenAI looking to do? Let’s explore!
 

What Is OpenAI Looking To Do?

 

• According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman is proposing a multi-trillion-dollar investment to enhance a new AI project.

• Believed to be looking for funds in the range of $5 trillion to $7 trillion, the project aimed to overhaul and improve the global AI chip-building capabilities.

• Altman believes the current set-up poses limitations to AI’s growth, having voiced his concerns about the demand and supply problems faced by the industry.  

• Reported backers for the project include the government of the United Arab Emirates.

• However, the report states that it might be a tough battle for Altman to win, considering the amount he’s looking for is more than the current global semiconductor market, which sits at a projected $1 trillion by the end of the decade.

• Additionally, if the required amount remains on the upper end of $7 trillion, it would be more than the market capitalization of Apple and Microsoft combined.

 

What Did Industry Experts Say?

 

• While Sam Altman, OpenAI and Microsoft denied commenting on the report, Sam Altman did post on social media addressing his concerns regarding the need for better AI infrastructure. 

• Through an X post (formerly Twitter), Sam Altman conveyed what OpenAI’s belief regarding the future was, writing, “[W]e believe the world needs more [AI] infrastructure--fab capacity, energy, datacenters, etc.--than people are currently planning to build.

• [Contd.] “Building massive-scale [AI] infrastructure, and a resilient supply chain, is crucial to economic competitiveness. [OpenAI] will try to help!”

• Speaking about the rapid rise in demand for OpenAI and its tools, Andy Hock, the SVP of Product and Strategy at Cerebras, an AI accelerator company, said, “The ChatGPT light bulb went off in everybody’s head, and it brought artificial intelligence and state-of-the-art deep learning into the public discourse.”

• [Contd.] “And from an enterprise standpoint, a light bulb went off in the heads of many Fortune 1000 CIOs and CTOs, too ... These generative models do things like simulate time series data. They can classify the languages and documents for applications, say, in finance and legal.

• [Contd.] “They can also be used in broad domains to do things like help researchers develop new pharmaceutical therapies or better understand electronic health records and predict health outcomes from particular treatments.”

Do you think OpenAI will be successful in their endeavor to enter the AI chip market? Do you think their aim is unrealistic or will it be achievable soon with global funding?

Let us know in the comments below!