OpenAI is falling short of revenue and user acquisition goals, causing some of the AI company’s executives to question its ability to support large infrastructure spending, The Wall Street Journal reports.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Fryar has warned other executives that the company may not be able to pay for computing contracts if revenue growth falls below forecasts, the newspaper’s sources said.
They said board members have begun taking a closer look in recent months at deals for the company to buy data centre capacity and questioned OpenAI chairman Sam Altman’s efforts to build up computing power despite the slowdown in business.
Fryar and other top executives are seeking to control costs and improve financial discipline at the company, which has at times led to disagreements with Altman, sources said. Increased cost control is curbing the previously nearly limitless ambitions of the head of OpenAI, which could hold an IPO this year, the WSJ writes.
Altman and Fryar issued a joint statement saying they were “in complete agreement on the need to purchase as much computing power as possible.” They called “absurd” reports that there were disagreements between the two or that the company was scaling back efforts to increase capacity.
According to the newspaper’s sources, OpenAI has failed to meet its goal of increasing the number of weekly active ChatGPT users to 1bn by the end of 2025. It has not announced the passing of that milestone until now, which has unnerved some investors.
Sources said OpenAI has also failed to meet its annual revenue forecast from ChatGPT due to growing competition from Google’s Gemini AI model.
This year, they said, the company is also falling short of forecasts, losing market share in some segments to Anthropic.
Earlier this year, OpenAI raised $122bn in an investment round, but given its commitment to computing power contracts, it will spend that amount over three years if ambitious revenue targets are met.