OpenAI’s Sam Altman Seeks $7 Trillion for AI Chip Project

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is seeking between $5 and $7 trillion in investments to take over the global semiconductor industry, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Altman is reportedly pitching his idea to different investors, including the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.

Altman has long complained about the lack of AI chips, known as graphics processing units (GPUs), required to train large language models like the one that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT. “The world needs more ai infrastructure – fab capacity, energy, data centers, etc – than people are currently planning to build,” he recently posted on X, concluding with “openai [sic] will try to help!”

In late 2023, Bloomberg reported that shortly before Altman’s brief firing as OpenAI CEO, he was trying to raise billions in the Middle East for a new chip venture, code-named Tigris, to rival Nvidia.

Nvidia currently holds the biggest slice of the AI chip-making pie, more precisely about 80% of it, with a market cap of about $1.72 trillion, slightly behind tech moguls Alphabet and Amazon.

The investment Altman is seeking is enormous compared to the $527 billion the global semiconductor industry made from chip sales last year. Chip sales are projected to reach $1 trillion by 2030, but Altman might skyrocket these figures if he gets the funding he seeks.

Altman’s thirst for AI chip market control dates back to 2018, when he financially backed AI chip startup Rain Neuromorphics and signed a letter of intent to purchase its AI chips for $51 million. In December, the US forced the biggest investor in Rain’s $25 million round, the Saudi Aramco-backed venture capital firm Prosperity7, to sell its shares.

In August, the US restricted exports of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices AI chips to some countries in the Middle East. Recently, the US proposed a “know-your-customer” program that aims to restrict foreign clients, particularly China, from using sophisticated US technology for AI development. It’s still unclear whether the growing number of limitations the US is imposing on tech companies will somehow affect Altman’s access to Middle Eastern capital.

Given that ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app of all time with 100+ million weekly users, including 92% of Fortune 500 companies, investors might have a good reason to bet on Altman’s new chip-making project.