OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was extremely bullish about the startup’s revenue projections and indicated he would relish the opportunity to take on his haters.
In an episode of the BG2 Pod that was posted on Friday, host Brad Gerstner, who is also the founder of Altimeter Capital, asked how the company could make financial commitments totaling $1.4 trillion when annual revenue is reportedly $13 billion.
“We’re doing well more revenue than that,” Altman replied.
OpenAI has announced massive AI infrastructure deals in recent weeks with companies like Nvidia, Broadcom, and Oracle. That’s as other so-called AI hyperscalers like Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and top OpenAI investor Microsoft are collectively totaling hundreds of billions of dollars a year in capital expenditures.
While OpenAI continues to raise tens of billions of dollars from investors and generate billions more in revenue, Altman has also warned losses will persist.
And Microsoft’s latest quarterly results included a $4 billion charge that implies OpenAI lost $12 billion last quarter. OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
But on the BG2 Pod, Altman quickly followed up his comment on OpenAI’s revenue with forceful pushback against those who doubt his company.
“We do plan for revenue to grow steeply. Revenue is growing steeply,” he said. “We are taking a forward bet that it’s going to 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 can automate science [and] will create huge value.”
Altman added that one of the rare instances when being a publicly traded company would be appealing is when there’s an opportunity for short-sellers to lose big.
“I would love to tell them they could just short the stock, and I would love to see them get burned on that,” he said.
Still, Altman acknowledged, OpenAI is taking a risk and could stumble, noting that if it doesn’t obtain enough computing capacity then revenue may fall short of forecasts.
But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who also appeared on the podcast, said OpenAI has exceeded all the business plans that he has seen.
“Everyone talks about all the success and the usage and what have you,” he said. “But even I’d say, all up, the business execution has been just pretty unbelievable.”
Later in the conversation, Altman hinted at even more explosive revenue growth in the next few years.
Last year, sources told the New York Times that OpenAI predicted revenue would hit $100 billion by 2029.
While talking about the potential for OpenAI to go public in the coming years, BG2 host Gerstner floated revenue estimates topping $100 billion a year in 2028 or 2029.
“How about ’27?” Altman interjected.