OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to the media after a Q&A at the OpenAI Data Center in Abilene, Texas, USA on September 23, 2025.
Shelby Tauber | Reuters
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Thursday that the artificial intelligence startup is on track to generate an annual revenue run rate of more than $20 billion this year and plans to grow sales to hundreds of billions of dollars by 2030.
The company has signed more than $1.4 trillion in infrastructure contracts in recent months to build data centers it says are needed to meet growing demand. This staggering amount has raised questions from investors and industry insiders about where OpenAI will get its money from.
“We are building the infrastructure for the AI-powered economy of the future, but given everything we have at hand with our research programs, now is the time to invest in actually scaling up our technology,” Altman wrote in a post on X. “Large infrastructure projects take a significant amount of time to build, so we need to start now.”
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research institute, but since launching its chatbot ChatGPT in 2022, it has become one of the fastest growing for-profit organizations on the planet. The startup is currently valued at $500 billion, but it is not yet profitable.
In September, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC that OpenAI is on track to generate $13 billion in revenue this year.
Frier attracted the attention of the Trump administration this week when he said at an event that OpenAI was creating an ecosystem of banking, private equity and federal government “backstops” or “guarantees” that could help finance investments in cutting-edge chips.
She clarified those comments late Wednesday, writing in a LinkedIn post that OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop on its infrastructure efforts.
“I used the word ‘backstop,’ but it obscured the point,” Frier wrote. “As the full text of my response shows, I wanted to make the case that America’s technological strength comes from building true industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government to play a role.”
“There is no federal bailout for AI,” venture capitalist David Sachs, President Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar, said Thursday. In a post on X, he wrote that if one of America’s frontier model companies fails, another will take its place.
Altman said Thursday that OpenAI “does not have and does not want government guarantees for OpenAI data centers.” He said taxpayers shouldn’t bail out companies that make poor decisions. “If we make the wrong decision, it’s our responsibility.”
“This is a bet we are making, and given our favorable position, we are comfortable with it,” Altman wrote. “But of course we could be wrong, and if we are wrong, the market will take care of it, not the government.”
WATCH: Trump AI czar David Sachs says ‘there is no federal bailout for AI’ following OpenAI CFO’s comments
