OpenAI expects to burn through $50 billion on computing power this year, President Greg Brockman testified Tuesday, revealing the staggering cost of running the world's most advanced AI models. The figure, disclosed during Brockman's second day on the witness stand in the Musk v. Altman trial, captures how dramatically OpenAI's infrastructure spending has ballooned.
Computing costs have surged from roughly $30 million in 2017 to tens of billions of dollars today, Bloomberg reported, as the ChatGPT maker develops more sophisticated AI systems and serves them to a growing user base. The $50 billion outlay puts OpenAI's computing budget on par with the GDP of a small country, reflecting the brute-force approach required to train and run frontier AI models. The company's latest fundraising round valued OpenAI at $852 billion, according to AP News.
Brockman's testimony came as he also disclosed for the first time that his personal stake in OpenAI is worth nearly $30 billion, a figure that places him among the 100 wealthiest people in the world, per Forbes. He told the court he did not personally invest any money in the company.
Musk's attorneys seized on the disclosure, pressing Brockman on why he held onto the stake rather than donating the bulk of it back to OpenAI's nonprofit arm. One 2017 journal entry entered into evidence showed Brockman had written: "Financially, what will take me to $1B?"
Brockman also confirmed that OpenAI is exploring an initial public offering, Yahoo Finance reported. He testified to a $471 million investment in Stripe, where he previously worked, and a stake in Corweave, a cloud computing provider that has a deal with OpenAI. The trial, now in its second week in Oakland federal court, centers on Musk's claim that Altman and Brockman betrayed OpenAI's founding mission as a nonprofit by transforming it into a for-profit enterprise. The judge has split proceedings into a liability phase followed by a potential remedies phase, where Musk's lawyers have argued he is owed up to $134 billion in wrongful gains.
