OpenAI is banking on a suite of new AI products, building its own data centers and a crucial partnership with Apple to accelerate its next phase of growth, aiming to reach 1 billion users within the next year. come.
The San Francisco-based group, whose popular chatbot ChatGPT has soared to 250 million weekly active users since its launch two years ago, plans to expand further by launching AI “agents,” its own AI-powered search engine and ChatGPT integration with Apple devices.
“(In 2025), we will become a research laboratory serving millions of people. . . hoping it could be billions of consumers around the world,” Sarah Friar, the company’s chief financial officer, told the Financial Times.
The goal comes as the nine-year-old startup transforms into a global tech giant and prepares for what its founder and CEO Sam Altman describes as the “age of intelligence.”
After raising more than $6 billion in investment at a valuation of $150 billion in October – the highest for a startup in Silicon Valley history – Friar said. OpenAI would continue to raise “more money,” including both equity and debt.
“In 74 days (since we joined the company in June), we put ten billion in cash on the balance sheet. So that was my way of saying, hey, I’m going to get this done too,” she said.
She added: “We are in a phase of massive growth, it is up to us to continue to invest. We must be at the frontier when it comes to models. It’s expensive. »
To achieve its goals, OpenAI plans to invest in building data center clusters in parts of the Midwest and Southwest United States, according to Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s new policy manager.
This push to build its own AI infrastructure follows a similar strategy from big tech rivals such as Google and Amazon. Lehane said “chips, data and energy” are the critical resources needed to succeed in the AI race.
OpenAI has transformed rapidly in the 12 months since Altman was ousted by the company’s board and then reinstated as chief executive last November.
It hired its first financial and product managers, increased its workforce fivefold to more than 2,000 people, and triggered a complicated transition from nonprofit to nonprofit. for profit economic model.
While OpenAI has lost key leaders within its research and security teams, including three of its original co-founders this year and high-profile technical leaders, such as Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati, the company has given way to a wave of new engineers and managers. .
Many members of the new team have expertise in creating and monetizing consumer products. This led to a dual focus: a long-term research vision and short-term product goals, with the company focusing on ramping up revenue-generating products to outpace its rising costs.
It spends well over $5 billion a year and is “far from breaking even” due to the costs of building AI models, according to people familiar with the group’s finances.
The new hires say they are still guided by OpenAI’s “mission” to build and distribute artificial general intelligence – software with cognitive abilities greater than those of humans – but are tasked with deploying real short-term utilities.
“In recent years, we have experienced a very important inflection point in the quality of intelligence that can now be transformed into products that are actually useful to people,” said Srinivas Narayanan, vice president of engineering at OpenAI, who joined last time. year of Meta. ” It is. . . why I’m here.
The launch of AI agents – chatbot-like assistants that help carry out tasks on the web, from gathering information to booking or purchasing items – will be a key goal for 2025, according to Friar .
“Agentic has to be the word of the year. . . It could be a researcher, a useful assistant for ordinary people, working moms like me. In 2025, we will see the first highly effective agents deployed to help people every day,” she said.
Competitors such as Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI’s biggest backer, Microsoft, have all signaled plans to launch their own AI agents in the coming year.
Meanwhile, the launch of ChatGPT on Apple’s billions of devices, which began its US rollout last month, is key to driving a surge in users.
One of OpenAI’s top venture capitalists noted that the goal of one billion users could be quickly reached through this partnership.
“(OpenAI) already has a few hundred (million) active users today without marketing expenses,” the investor said. “Apple has 2 billion iPhones worldwide and wants to offer a new phone with AI. The path to getting 1 billion users with ChatGPT in their pocket is not that far-fetched. If you reach this threshold, you are competing with Google and Facebook.
At the same time, OpenAI will also need to navigate an increasingly complex political landscape.
Lehane, a seasoned political strategist who cut his teeth in the Clinton White House, will face new President Donald Trump’s close adviser and former OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, who runs his own AI company xAI, and should help him. shape federal AI policy.
Musk recently filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft, accusing Altman of “deception of Shakespearean proportions” and seeking to cancel his business partnership with Microsoft.
“(Musk) is obviously a unique personality right now. I think the way we look at it is that we control what we can control,” Lehane told the FT.
Despite the public conflict with Musk, he said OpenAI and the Trump team agree on the role of AI in national security and economic competitiveness.
Lehane wants OpenAI to take the lead in building large-scale “democratic” AI led by the United States, versus a version of the technology led by China.
“We have had conversations with the transition team. . . both during the campaign and after,” he said.
“This administration has spoken. . . on the imperative of . . . US-led AI trumps China-led AI. And if you want this to happen, as the US government. . . then OpenAI will have to be in the middle of this conversation.
Lehane believes the next few years will mark the start of a historic global transition – a time when technology will evolve at a pace that societies will struggle to adapt to.
Governments will need to develop new public-private partnerships in AI, similar to an electric utility model, to equitably distribute the technology and its benefits, he added.
“Part of the responsibility and role of this company is to . . . potentially shaping these conversations and forming these conversations, and hopefully being able to find some of the answers as we move forward,” Lehane said.