OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Berlin on September 25, 2025.
Florian Gärtner | Phototech | Getty Images
OpenAI is telling investors it aims to bring total computing spending to about $600 billion by 2030, months after CEO Sam Altman touted $1.4 trillion in infrastructure spending.
Artificial intelligence companies are offering lower numbers and clearer timelines for planned spending amid widespread concerns that their expansion ambitions are too large for the subsequent revenue potential, people told CNBC.
OpenAI projects total revenue of more than $280 billion in 2030, with roughly equal contributions from its consumer and enterprise businesses, said the people, who requested anonymity because the information is private. The company’s proposed spending plan is intended to be tied more directly to expected revenue growth, the people said.
Late last year, OpenAI announced a flurry of multibillion-dollar infrastructure deals, partnering with major chipmakers and cloud companies.
OpenAI is finalizing a large funding round that could total more than $100 billion, with about 90% of it coming from strategic investors, one of the people said. Nvidia is in talks to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI as part of a round that values the company at a pre-money valuation of $730 billion, CNBC has confirmed.
In addition to Nvidia, strategic investors in the financing include SoftBank and Amazon.
Officials say OpenAI will generate $13.1 billion in revenue in 2025, exceeding its $10 billion goal. The company said it used up $8 billion, less than its $9 billion goal.
The startup was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research institute and burst into the mainstream in 2022 with the launch of its chatbot ChatGPT. Officials said ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users, up from 800 million in October.
In December, OpenAI declared a “code red” to focus on improving its chatbots in the face of competition from rivals Google and Anthropic. After slowing growth in the fall, ChatGPT is back to record highs in both weekly and daily active users, officials said.
The number of weekly active users of the company’s coding product, Codex, has exceeded 1.5 million, according to officials. Codex competes directly with Anthropic’s Claude Code, which saw a wave of adoption last year.
Watch: Watch CNBC’s full interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
