OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is looking to raise billions of dollars to change the global semiconductor industry and has spoken with possible investors, including the UAE government, according to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
Altman is apparently attempting to address some of the most pressing issues confronting the fast-developing artificial intelligence field, including a scarcity of the pricey computer chips required to power large-language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Only a few companies currently dominate the worldwide chip industry, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and NVIDIA, headquartered in the United States.
While many countries have announced plans to encourage local chip production, the financial assistance they have provided pales in comparison to the large quantities of money Altman is talking with investors.
The Journal calculated that the entire cost of completing Altman’s scheme may be as high as $7 trillion.
This is around a trillion dollars higher than the combined market value of the world’s two largest publicly traded firms, Apple and Microsoft.
OpenAI in talks to boost global chip, energy, and data center supply chains
An OpenAI spokeswoman told the Journal that the company has had “productive discussions about increasing global infrastructure and supply chains for chips, energy, and data centers.”
They also stated that they would “continue to keep the US government informed, given the importance of national priorities.”
Altman has met with senior UAE government officials, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, and TSMC representatives, according to the Journal.
Bloomberg and the Financial Times have also covered some of Altman’s meetings in recent weeks.
Altman has proposed establishing hundreds of chip-fabrication units in the coming years with funds from Middle Eastern investors and then paying TSMC to build and maintain them, according to the Journal.
Altman’s fortunes have fluctuated in recent months, despite his rise to notoriety following the widely publicized release of ChatGPT.
He was briefly sacked from his role at the AI startup in November but was rehired a few days later after staff and investors rebelled.