$1 trillion by 2030: OpenAI prepares ambitious spending plan

OpenAI was valued at $500 billion in early October 2025, making it the world's most valuable startup, even surpassing Elon Musk's SpaceX. Despite this, the ChatGPT developer is still far from profitable, and while it is projected to earn about $13 billion this year, expenses will be even higher.

This situation does not stop OpenAI from ambitious plans. According to the Financial Times, the startup is drawing up a five-year plan to raise funds, increase revenue and create debt partnerships to cover more than a trillion dollars in costs by 2030.

Moreover, the company's CEO Sam Altman previously stated that OpenAI needs as much as $7 trillion and 10 GW to create artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can help cure cancer.

The company is primarily using the funds for data centers. OpenAI currently has deals with Oracle, NVIDIA, AMD, and Broadcom to provide more than 26 gigawatts of computing power, which would be worth many times more than the $13 billion the startup could raise.

To cover such incredible costs, ChatGPT is considering a variety of funding options. Potential ideas include government contracts, launching shopping tools, new video services like the recently launched Sora app, which was downloaded 1 million times in five days, developing consumer hardware, which the startup is working on with Jony Ive but is currently struggling with, and becoming its own supplier through Project Stargate.

Most of OpenAI’s revenue now comes from ChatGPT subscribers, who make up just 5% of the more than 800 million users, Altman said. OpenAI is trying to grow in that direction, even rolling out a cheaper ChatGPT Go subscription for $5 per month in various regions to increase the number of paying users, but it needs to do much more to achieve its goals.