OpenAI's Projected Spending Soars to $115 Billion Through 2029, Signaling Massive AI Investment

OpenAI expects business to burn $115 billion through 2029, The Information reports

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman walks on the day of a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Education in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 4, 2025. OpenAI has sharply raised its projected cash burn through 2029 to $115 billion as it ramps up spending to power the artificial intelligence behind its popular ChatGPT chatbot, The Information reported on Friday. The new forecast is $80 billion higher than the company previously expected, the news outlet said, without citing a source for the report. OpenAI, which has become one of the world's biggest renters of cloud servers, projects it will burn more than $8 billion this year, some $1.5 billion higher than its projection from earlier this year, the report said. The company did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. To control its soaring costs, OpenAI will seek to develop its own data center server chips and facilities to power its technology, The Information said. OpenAI is set to produce its first artificial intelligence chip next year in partnership with U.S. semiconductor giant Broadcom, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, saying OpenAI plans to use the chip internally rather than make it available to customers. The company deepened its tie-up with Oracle in July with a planned 4.5-gigawatts of data center capacity, building on its Stargate initiative, a project of up to $500 billion and 10 gigawatts that includes Japanese technology investor SoftBank. OpenAI has also added Alphabet's Google Cloud among its suppliers for computing capacity. The company's cash burn will more than double to over $17 billion next year, $10 billion higher than OpenAI's earlier projection, with a burn of $35 billion in 2027 and $45 billion in 2028, The Information said.

OpenAI says spending to rise to $115 billion through 2029: Information

OpenAI is in the process of developing its own data center server chips and facilities to drive the technologies, in an effort to control cloud server rental expenses, according to the report. The company predicted it could spend more than $8 billion this year, roughly $1.5 billion more than an earlier projection, The Information said. Another factor influencing the increased need for capital is computing costs, on which the company expects to spend more than $150 billion from 2025 through 2030. The cost to develop AI models is also higher than previously expected, The Information said.

OpenAI Forecasts Spending Will Jump to $115 Billion Through 2029 | PYMNTS.com

The artificial intelligence (AI) startup is now forecasting that it will burn through $115 billion over the next four years, nearly $80 billion more than it had previously projected, The Information reported Friday (Sept. 5). The report noted that this "unprecedented" spending projection, adding to the roughly $2 billion it exhausted in the last two years, explains why OpenAI is raising more funds than any private company on record. CEO Sam Altman has told employees that the company might be the "most capital intensive" startup ever, the report pointed out. The report added that OpenAI is developing its own data center server chips and facilities to support the technologies, and thus hem in the cost of server rentals. PYMNTS has contacted OpenAI for comment but has not yet gotten a reply. An earlier report from The Information, published in April, said that OpenAI anticipated spending $46 billion in the next four years and turn cash flow positive in 2029, when it expects to generate about $2 billion in cash. Now, the Friday report said, OpenAI is forecasting that it will burn more than $8 billion during 2025, up roughly $1.5 billion from a projection earlier in the year. Spending will more than double to more than $17 billion in 2026, or $10 billion more than earlier projections. In the following two years, OpenAI is projecting it will burn through around a respective $35 billion and $45 billion. In earlier forecasts, the company said it would spend $11 billion in 2028. In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about new research showing a 98% consensus among U.S. product leaders that generative AI will transform operations in the next three years. That's according to "From Experiment to Imperative: US Product Leaders Bet on Gen AI," a PYMNTS Intelligence report based on surveys of chief product officers (CPOs) at companies generating at least $250 million in yearly revenue. "They weren't founders tinkering in garages or early adopters chasing hype," PYMNTS wrote. "These are seasoned executives, the ones who approve budgets, sign vendor contracts, and shape the roadmaps that determine whether a product survives the next quarterly review." As for what this means for solution providers and software vendors, the report added, no one generative AI provider can claim a decisive cross-industry lead.