OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pressing forward with plans to spend trillions of dollars on new products and services, including an even more ubiquitous ChatGPT. A week after the rollout of the company’s latest model, GPT-5, raised criticism and questions about his strategy.
Altman acknowledged concerns but said he’s integrated lessons learned and will continue investing in AI development. He aims to create a slew of products and services that utilize ChatGPT, which he believes will become ubiquitous. “Pretty soon, like billions of people a day will be talking to ChatGPT,” Altman said during a dinner with reporters.
The big plans require significant spending, estimated at $300 billion on data center construction. Altman defended this investment, saying it pays off in the long run. “Our answer is, we can spend $300 billion and sell $400 billion in services, and if we don’t have the $300 billion in data centers, we just keep disappointing our customers.”
Altman also emphasized that ChatGPT’s capabilities are expanding beyond training new models to running inference. He believes this shift will lead to increased efficiency and profit margins for OpenAI.
Critics argue that the cost of training new models is keeping OpenAI from turning a profit. However, Altman says the company can make progress while staying profitable on inference.
Altman expressed interest in setting up a separate brain-computer interface company, citing Neuralink as an example. He also sees potential for collaboration with Apple and plans to explore a public offering.
Despite criticism, Altman remains optimistic about OpenAI’s future, stating that the company will continue to push boundaries in AI development. “The Turing test has passed,” he said of GPT-5, which he believes marks a significant milestone in AI capabilities.
Source: https://www.axios.com/2025/08/15/sam-altman-gpt5-launch-chatgpt-future