OpenAI just slashed its ambitious compute spending projection by more than half, telling investors it now expects to spend roughly $600 billion on infrastructure by 2030 instead of the eye-popping $1.4 trillion figure it floated earlier. The dramatic reset marks a significant recalibration of AI infrastructure expectations across the industry and signals growing investor pressure on even the most well-funded AI labs to demonstrate financial discipline. For context, $600 billion still dwarfs the annual capital expenditures of tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon combined.
OpenAI is hitting the brakes on its most ambitious spending forecasts, telling investors that its compute infrastructure target now sits around $600 billion by 2030 - a dramatic step back from the $1.4 trillion figure the company had been circulating in recent months. The revision, reported by CNBC, marks one of the sharpest financial recalibrations in the AI sector's brief but turbulent history.
The news sent ripples through the AI infrastructure ecosystem immediately. Nvidia, whose chips power most of OpenAI's training operations, saw modest after-hours volatility as traders digested what the reduced forecast might mean for future GPU orders. Data center operators who'd been planning expansions around AI demand are now reassessing their own projections. The $800 billion difference isn't just a rounding error - it's larger than the entire market cap of most Fortune 500 companies.
What triggered the reset? According to people familiar with the matter, investor pushback played a major role. While OpenAI's ChatGPT continues to dominate consumer AI applications, the company's backers - including Microsoft, which has invested over $13 billion - have been pressing for more realistic financial planning. The $1.4 trillion figure reportedly raised eyebrows during private funding discussions, with some investors questioning whether even OpenAI's revenue trajectory could justify that scale of infrastructure spend.
