Sam Altman says ‘enough’ to questions about OpenAI’s revenue

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said the company does “well in excess” of $13 billion in annual revenue — and he sounded a bit testy when asked how it would pay for its massive spending obligations.

His comments came during a joint interview on the Bg2 podcast between Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the collaboration between their two companies. Host Brad Gerstner (also founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital) brought up reports that the company is currently bringing in about $13 billion in revenue – a significant amount, but one that’s dwarfed by more than $1 trillion in computing infrastructure spending commitments that OpenAI has made over the next decade.

“First of all, we’re doing a lot more sales than that,” Altman said. “Second, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I will find you a buyer. I just have enough. I think there are a lot of people who would like to buy OpenAI shares.”

“Including myself,” Gerstner interjected.

Altman then added that there are critics who “talk with a lot of breathless concern about our computer business or anything else that would like to buy our stock.”

He even said that while there’s “not often” that he wants OpenAI to become a publicly traded company, “one of the rare times it’s attractive is when those people write this ridiculous ‘OpenAI is about to go bankrupt.’ [posts]I’d like to tell them they can just short the stock, and I’d like to see them get burned for it.

Altman acknowledged that there are ways the company “could screw up” — for example, by not getting access to enough computing resources — but he said “revenue is growing strongly.”

“We are betting that it will continue to grow, and that ChatGPT will not only continue to grow, but that we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be an important and important business, that AI that can automate science will create enormous value,” he added.

Nadella, who laughed at much of Altman’s answer, also claimed that OpenAI has “defeated” every business plan it has given Microsoft as an investor.

Gerstner returned to the topic of OpenAI’s revenues and IPO plans later in the interview, when he speculated that the company would reach $100 billion in revenue by 2028 or 2029.

“How about ’27?’ Altman replied.

At the same time, he denied reports that OpenAI plans to go public next year.

“No no no, we don’t have anything specific,” Altman said. “I’m a realist, I assume it will happen at some point, but I don’t know why people are writing these reports. We don’t have a date in mind, we don’t have a board decision to do this or anything like that. I just assume this is where things will eventually go.”