On Saturday (November 1st) Eastern Time, OpenAI CEO Sam Alt... Sam Altman, in a podcast, responded to criticisms about OpenAI's financial situation.
He stated explicitly that the company's revenue "far exceeds" $13 billion and is still growing rapidly.
The company's revenue far exceeds $13 billion.
In late October of this year, after OpenAI completed its controversial for-profit restructuring, CEO Altman publicly announced that the company had committed approximately $1.4 trillion to infrastructure construction, equivalent to 30 gigawatts of data centers. Computing power. This includes collaborations with Microsoft. Nvidia Transactions with partners.
On Saturday, Eastern Time, in an interview with investor and podcast host Brad Gerstner, Altman was asked how OpenAI could afford its $1.4 trillion investment commitment given its current annual revenue of only $13 billion.
Altman replied, "Our actual revenue is far higher than that figure."
He also retorted sharply that skeptics could simply sell their shares—he was sure he could find buyers. He even said he'd love for critics to short OpenAI—though this was just hypothetical for now, as the company wasn't yet publicly listed and an initial public offering (IPO) was still a long way off.
“I rarely wish I were a publicly traded company, but there was one time I really wished we were, and that was when those people wrote those ridiculous reports saying OpenAI was going to go bankrupt. I would have loved to tell them they could short the stock right away, and I would have loved to see them suffer losses as a result,” Altman stated frankly.
Altman stated that OpenAI's rapid development so far has benefited from its artificial intelligence... Demand for products and services is strong, but achieving future goals requires an unprecedented pace of business expansion. Therefore, the company is looking to generate new revenue streams from AI cloud infrastructure, proprietary equipment, and automated scientific research . He believes that the biggest bottleneck to OpenAI's current development lies in computing power.
The concerns are not unfounded.
Although Altman himself is very confident about OpenAI's revenue prospects, concerns about the company's performance pressure are not unfounded.
According to Microsoft 's quarterly earnings report ending September 30, its equity method investment in OpenAI reduced net income by $3.1 billion. Based on Microsoft 's approximately 27% stake in OpenAI, this translates to a net loss of approximately $11.5 billion for OpenAI in that quarter. However, considering pre-tax losses and the previously higher percentage of Microsoft's stake, OpenAI's actual loss could exceed $12 billion.
However, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who also participated in the podcast on Saturday, seemed unconcerned about OpenAI's performance. He praised OpenAI's execution as "incredible."
Nadella is both a partner and a major investor in OpenAI. He stated frankly, "Frankly, every business plan I've seen from OpenAI has never failed after implementation."
(Article source: CLS)
