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OpenAI resets spending expectations, tells investors compute target is around $600 billion by 2030
webCredibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: CNBC
Relevant for tracking the scale of resources flowing into frontier AI development, which has direct implications for the pace of capabilities advancement and the resources available for safety work.
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Importance: 38/100news articlenews
Summary
A CNBC report covering OpenAI's revised financial projections, targeting approximately $600 billion in spending by 2030. The article reflects the massive capital investment being directed into AI infrastructure and compute scaling, signaling continued aggressive expansion of frontier AI development.
Key Points
- •OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in cumulative spending by 2030, a significant upward revision of prior expectations.
- •The scale of investment underscores the enormous compute and infrastructure demands of frontier AI development.
- •Such spending levels reflect the competitive race dynamics among leading AI labs and their backers.
- •The financial projections have implications for AI governance and the concentration of AI capabilities in well-funded organizations.
- •This level of capital deployment raises questions about oversight, accountability, and safety investment relative to capabilities spending.
1 FactBase fact citing this source
| Entity | Property | Value | As Of |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | infrastructure-investment-target | 600 billion | Feb 2026 |
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Key Points After previously boasting $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments, OpenAI is now telling investors that it plans to spend $600 billion by 2030.
The AI company has faced mounting concerns about whether it can ever generate enough revenue to cover its costs.
OpenAI is now targeting about $280 billion in revenue in 2030 after reeling in $13.1 billion last year, CNBC has learned.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is pictured on Sept. 25, 2025, in Berlin. Florian Gaertner | Photothek | Getty Images OpenAI is telling investors that it's now targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, months after CEO Sam Altman touted $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments.
The artificial intelligence company is providing a lower number and more defined timeline for its planned spending, sources told CNBC, as broader concerns mounted that expansion ambitions were too great for the potential revenue that would follow.
OpenAI is projecting that its total revenue for 2030 will be more than $280 billion, with nearly equal contributions from its consumer and enterprise businesses, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the information is private. The spending plan the company is offering is meant to more directly tie to its expected revenue growth, the people said.
In the back half of last year, OpenAI announced a flurry of multibillion-dollar infrastructure deals , partnering with leading chipmakers and cloud companies.
OpenAI is finalizing a massive funding round that could total more than $100 billion, with about 90% coming from strategic investors, one person said. Nvidia is in discussions to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI as part of the round that could value the company at a $730 billion pre-money valuation, CNBC has confirmed.
In addition to Nvidia, strategic investors in the funding include SoftBank and Amazon .
OpenAI generated $13.1 billion in revenue in 2025, the sources said, up from its $10 billion target. The company burned through $8 billion, lower than its $9 billion target, they said.
The startup was founded as a nonprofit research lab in 2015, and it rocketed into the mainstream following the launch of its chatbot ChatGPT in 2022. ChatGPT now supports more than 900 million weekly active users, the people said, up from 800 million as of October.
OpenAI declared a " code red " in December to focus on improving the chatbot in the face of competition from rivals Google and Anthropic. ChatGPT had a dip in growth in the fall, but is back to record highs in both weekly active and daily active users, the people said.
The company's coding product, Codex , has surpassed more than 1.5 million weekly active users, the people said. Codex competes directly with Anthropic's Claude Code, which has seen
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