According to a media report, the head of the AI company OpenAI, Sam Altman, is promoting trillions in investments in the chip industry. One region in particular is the focus of interest.
The boom in artificial intelligence is apparently causing OpenAI, developer of the text chatbot ChatGPT, to grow quickly. According to a report in the Financial Times citing insiders, the company exceeded the $2 billion mark in sales in December. In order to secure future growth, OpenAI boss Sam Altman is said to be planning a billion-dollar program to build more factories for AI chips.
The head of the ChatGPT developer is promoting a billion-dollar project to build additional factories for AI chips to investors, wrote the “Wall Street Journal,” citing insiders. Altman wants to raise five to seven trillion dollars for this and is talking to potential donors from the United Arab Emirates, among others.
Conversations in the UAE
As the Wall Street Journal further reports, Altman met with various actors, in particular with Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan from the United Arab Emirates. The Wall Street Journal learned this from people familiar with the matter. Al Nahyan is the country’s top security official and brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates.
Altman also subsequently met with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and representatives from chip factories such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to discuss the project. In discussions with TSMC, Altman said he wanted to build dozens of chip factories in the next few years, the people said. His vision is to raise money from investors in the Middle East and to commission TSMC to build and operate the facilities.
Chip shortage drives initiative
“OpenAI has had productive conversations about expanding the global infrastructure and supply chains for chips, energy and data centers that are critical to AI and other industries that rely on it,” the Wall Street Journal quoted a spokeswoman as saying OpenAI. “We will continue to keep the U.S. government informed given its importance to national priorities and look forward to sharing more details at a later date.”
Programs like ChatGPT from OpenAI are computationally intensive and require special processors. However, these are not available in sufficient quantities because there are only a few providers worldwide. Many semiconductor companies have announced the expansion and construction of new plants in recent months. Among other things, new “megafabs” are to be built in Magdeburg and Dresden. However, the total volume of these planned investments does not come close to Altman’s plans.