How Will OpenAI Fund Its Multibillion-Dollar Ambitions?

Summary

WSJ What’s News – How Will OpenAI Fund Its Multibillion-Dollar Ambitions?

Date: September 12, 2025
Host: Kate Bullivant (The Wall Street Journal)
Guest: Elliot Brown (Journal Reporter), with industry and academic quotes

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Episode Overview

This episode examines OpenAI’s massive spending plans as it positions itself at the vanguard of the artificial intelligence boom—and the urgent question of how it will actually pay for its ambitions. The show also recaps OpenAI’s revenue realities, investment sources, and the risks inherent in betting on explosive future growth. The episode additionally touches on a new study about gender disparities in AI tool usage and covers major world news in politics and technology.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Global and Business News Highlights

• Charlie Kirk Shooting Investigation (Utah):
  • Ongoing manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s shooter, with over 7,000 FBI tips.
  • Utah Governor Spencer Cox calls the suspect "this evil human being" (01:41), urging public assistance.
• Tariff Tensions:
  • China warns Mexico against proposed tariffs targeting Chinese goods.
  • Mexico aims to support domestic industry via tariffs on imports, especially autos, steel, and textiles.
  • US tariff revenue has surged, but as economist Kent Smet notes, it’s still “a small fraction” compared to the deficit (04:11).
• Brazil Political and Trade Drama:
  • Brazil’s Supreme Court sentences former President Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years for coup plotting.
  • US, under President Trump, escalates trade war with new tariffs and sanctions related to Brazil’s judiciary.
• SK Hynix Market Surge:
  • South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix’s shares soar on new high bandwidth memory chips for AI applications, with sharply improved data center efficiency.
  • PR Venkat explains the significance for global tech giants (06:36).

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Deep Dive: OpenAI’s Billion Dollar Spending Spree

OpenAI’s Spending Ambitions (08:10)

• Planned Outlays:

  • $60 billion per year on computing contracts, including a major partnership with Oracle.
  • $18 billion committed with SoftBank for massive data centers.
  • Plans for a mass-market hardware device.
  • $10 billion for customized chips.

• Quote:

  "They've really racked up quite a lot of bills that they are on track to spend $60 billion a year..."
  – Elliot Brown (08:48)

• Key Insight:
  OpenAI is investing at an unprecedented scale, betting on a boom in AI demand and hardware infrastructure.

Funding Reality Check (09:15)

• Revenue vs. Costs:

  • On pace for $13 billion in revenue this year.
  • Annual losses persist due to outsize investments.
  • Business model relies heavily on anticipated rapid future growth.

• Quote:

  "It's basically just a really, really, really big bet that they're going to see revenue completely explode over the next few years."
  – Elliot Brown (00:52; 09:26)

• OpenAI’s “Bull Case”:

  • 700 million weekly active users (about 9% of the global population).
  • Revenue tripling year over year, unprecedented consumer and enterprise adoption.

• Notable Statistic:

  "Nothing has penetrated the world like this in technology before so quickly."
  – Elliot Brown (09:26)

Ongoing Uncertainties (10:30)

• Lingering Risks:

  • Commitments far exceed existing cash flow; funding primarily comes from private equity.
  • SoftBank has pledged $30 billion, but the private investment pool may be nearly tapped.
  • Reliance on ever-larger capital infusions could be unsustainable if revenue doesn’t keep pace.

• Quote:

  "The private market for raising money like that is not infinite. And Sam Altman has already tapped almost all of the biggest players..."
  – Elliot Brown (10:35)

• Doubts from Academics and Industry:

  • Reports indicate limited financial returns for businesses investing in AI.
  • Wide adoption by consumers, but enterprise adoption—and spending—lags.
  • Potential over-estimation of near-future revenue from the business sector.

• Quote:

  "Lots of people are using ChatGPT, but that doesn't mean it actually makes any money for companies. So consumers have been quick, businesses a lot slower."
  – Elliot Brown (11:42)

Press Context

• WSJ Disclosure (12:14):
  • News Corp, owner of WSJ, has a content licensing agreement with OpenAI.

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Gender Gaps in AI Tool Usage (12:14)

• Study Findings:

  • Only 42% of ChatGPT’s 200 million users are women.
  • This figure drops to 27% for mobile users.

• Global Consistency:
  The gender gap persists across countries and user groups (students, business owners, etc.).

• Quote:

  "So you see a real drop when you compare men to women overall, and they found the same trend in... diverse groups."
  – Lisa Ward (12:55)

• Societal Concern:

  • The lack of gender diversity could introduce bias in AI systems.
  • Potential to reinforce stereotypes if mostly male data drives AI development.

• Quote:

  "If men are the primary users, gender value could exasperate gender biases or stereotypes."
  – Lisa Ward (13:21)

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Memorable Quotes and Timestamps

• On OpenAI’s Big Bet:

  "It's basically just a really, really, really big bet that they're going to see revenue, the amount of money completely explode over the next few years."
  – Elliot Brown (00:52; 09:26)

• On Political Violence Response:

  "We want to make sure that they get as much attention as possible so that we can get help from, from the public in, in tracking down this, this evil human being."
  – Governor Spencer Cox (01:41)

• On the Limits of Tariff Impact:

  "It still only makes up a small fraction [of the deficit]... ultimately that revenue is coming from US households and US firms."
  – Kent Smet (04:11)

• On AI Gender Gap:

  "If men are the primary users, gender value could exasperate gender biases or stereotypes."
  – Lisa Ward (13:21)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• [00:33] – Headlines and today’s top stories
• [07:20] – Transition to OpenAI segment preview
• [08:10] – OpenAI’s capital commitments, partnerships, and hardware plans
• [09:15] – The funding gap and OpenAI’s reliance on future hyper-growth
• [10:30] – Concerns: risk, capital market limitations, real-world business adoption
• [12:14] – Gender gap in generative AI usage

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Tone and Takeaways

The episode delivers a brisk, fact-driven analysis in trademark WSJ style—balancing cautious optimism about OpenAI’s growth trajectory with a reality check about the financial risks and market unknowns. It highlights the interplay between bold innovation bets and the sober realities of revenue, investment, and societal impacts.

For further details, the episode recommends WSJ’s ongoing coverage and their Tech News Briefing podcast for tech-specific updates.

Transcript

[Morgan Stanley Host]

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[Kate Bullivant]

Utah's governor calls for public help to identify a suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk as the manhunt enters its third day. Plus, China warns Mexico against tariffs that could harm Chinese goods and OpenAI is on a spending spree, but can they fund it?

[Elliot Brown]

It's basically just a really, really, really big bet that they're going to see revenue, the amount of money completely explode over the next few years.

[Kate Bullivant]

It's Friday, September 12th. I'm Kate Bullivant for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of what's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin in Utah, where governor Spencer Cox has urged people to help identify a person of interest in Wednesday's shooting of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk. Cox spoke as officials release new video of the suspect's escape, showing the man running on the roof of a single story building after the shooting and jumping off the ledge.

[Governor Spencer Cox]

Those have already been released, but we want to make sure that they get as much attention as possible so that we can get help from, from the public in, in tracking down this, this evil human being.

[Kate Bullivant]

Cox said the FBI had already received 7,000 tips about the shooting after offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information. Vice President J.D. vance to Utah yesterday, meeting with Kirk's family and friends and then accompanying Charlie Kirk's casket to Phoenix, where his political foundation, Turning Point, is headquartered. For further updates on Kirk's shooting and the ongoing manhunt, you can check out the live blog on WSJ.com throughout the day. Vice President J.D. vance is expected in Utah later today, having yesterday met with Kirk's family and friends and then accompanying Charlie Kirk's casket to Phoenix, where his political foundation, Turning Point, is headquartered. For further updates on Kirk's shooting and the ongoing manhunt, check out the live blog on WSJ.com throughout the day. China has threatened to retaliate against Mexico over a plan by the Mexican government to raise tariffs that would hurt Chinese automakers. In an official statement, a Chinese spokesperson said countries should work together to safeguard free trade at a time when The US has abused tariffs. It comes after Mexico announced this week it plans to hike tariffs on imports of key goods from countries with which it doesn't have a trade agreement with, including autos, steel and textiles as part of efforts to bolster domestic industry. Mexico has benefited from trade tensions between the US And China in recent years, with Chinese investments pouring in amid ballooning bilateral trade. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House and launched his global trade war, he's claimed the US has raked in trillions of dollars in revenue. And while that's not yet true, the number is in the hundreds of billions. According to a budget model from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, the US has collected more than $159 billion in tariff revenue as of early September. That's an almost 150% increase compared to a year ago. But the Wharton School's Kent Smet if you compare tariff revenues against the country's growing deficit, it still only makes up a small fraction.

[Kent Smet]

This is really the first time that tariffs are being used as a revenue generator for the US treasury, and the motivation behind that is that we're on this exploding debt path right now. It's unsustainable and so there has to be some revenue that comes in or some spending that goes down in order to try to stabilize the future debt to output ratio in the US economy going forward, especially starting next year. If the current tariff rates stick around, it will raise a fair amount of revenue. And of course, ultimately that revenue is coming from US households and US firms who are essentially paying that money.

[Kate Bullivant]

Predicting future import demand and tariff revenue is also proving difficult, with many of Trump's tariffs still under negotiation and the Supreme Court yet to weigh in on whether the president had the authority to to impose the levies. Last month, a federal appeals court ruled he overstepped his authority when using his emergency powers to rewrite trade policy. Brazil's Supreme Court has sentenced former President Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison after he was found guilty of plotting a coup to overturn the 2022 election. The move defies President Trump's efforts to derail a case that has electrified Latin America's largest country and thrust Brazil into centre of the US administration's trade war. Trump levelled 50% tariffs on Brazilian exports because of what his administration has called a witch hunt against the former leader, while the Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Federal Court justice for his handling of legal cases involving Bolsonaro. Posting on social media, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US will respond accordingly without specifying how. Turning to markets now and shares of Nvidia supplier SK Hynix hit a record high this morning, surging almost 7% after the South Korean company said it's ready to mass produce a new generation of high bandwidth memory chips. Journal editor PR Venkat says the achievement puts SK Hynix in prime position to meet soaring demand from companies like Google, Amazon and Meta.

[PR Venkat]

One of the biggest advantage for this is that first it's a next generation product with ultra high performance for AI customers so it is able to improve the performance by 69% and when the product is applied it says that the data bottlenecks significantly reduced and data center power costs are reduced which is huge when we are looking at the amount of investment and demand that is there among companies like Google, Meta and SK Hynix now gets an edge compared others. For example, we have recently announced that Oracle has said it has signed several high value contracts. So this puts Hynix in a little bit of a leader position because they're already ready to produce.

[Kate Bullivant]

Ms. Coming up we look at OpenAI's billion dollar spending spree to fuel its AI ambitions and not least whether it has the money to fund those projects. That story after the break.

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[Kate Bullivant]

OpenAI has big ambitions recently committing to spending billions of dollars on everything from computing, data centers, hardware and chips. The big question is how will the world's largest startup pay for these ventures? OpenAI has told investors it's on pace to make $13 billion in revenue. To a person familiar with the matter, the company loses billions of dollars a year. Journal reporter Elliot Brown has been digging into the numbers. Elliot, just remind us of OpenAI's spending ambitions and some of those planned projects.

[Elliot Brown]

Yeah, so they've really racked up quite a lot of bills that they are on Track to spend $60 billion a year starting on a computing contract with Oracle to train their models. They've committed 18 billion to this giant venture with SoftBank build data centers. They've said they're going to make a Mass market hardware device. And then there was just a deal that was revealed where they are planning to purchase 10 billion of customized chips.

[Kate Bullivant]

I mean, that's big spending. OpenAI is currently on the hook to pay hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade for these different ventures. How does it actually have that money?

[Elliot Brown]

Well, the short answer is it doesn't. They take in somewhere around $13 billion or on pace to do that this year in revenue, but then their costs are far higher than that. And so it's basically just a really, really, really big bet that they're going to see revenue completely explode over the next few years, that businesses and consumers are really just going to start shelling out and paying for more advanced AI products that we don't even have today. The bull case on OpenAI is that it is, you know, by far the fastest growing consumer app ever. They claim 700 million weekly active users, which is, you know, basically 9% of the entire globe. And the idea is that nothing has penetrated the world like this in technology before so quickly, and that they are going to see revenue just skyrocket. And if you look at how much their sales have grown, it's very fast. It's tripling year over year, which is not something you see often in tech.

[Kate Bullivant]

This sounds positive for OpenAI. Why is there lingering uncertainty then?

[Elliot Brown]

The short version is because they are committing much bigger numbers for spending than they are taking in money today. So it's really impressive that they've been able to grow to 13 billion in revenue, but they're rapidly agreeing to spend well over $60 billion a year in a few years. And where do you get that money in the short term? They largely have been getting these huge equity infusions, investment infusions from some really big tech investors. SoftBank is by far the biggest. They've committed 30 billion. And, you know, then there's a large number of other private equity players who are sort of heaving billions at OpenAI. An issue, though, is that the private market for raising money like that is not infinite. And Sam Altman has already tapped almost all of the biggest players in that. And it's sort of yet to be seen how much deeper it is.

[Kate Bullivant]

And I guess on top of that, academics and industry experts doubting OpenAI's belief that consumers will increase their spending on AI at explosive rates for years to come. Right?

[Elliot Brown]

Yeah. There's a number of recent academic reports that basically show that companies so far have not been seeing any sort of good return on their investments in AI. So lots of people are using ChatGPT, but that doesn't mean it actually makes any money for companies. So consumers have been quick businesses, a lot slower. And if that continues, that's a huge problem because OpenAI and others are expecting more from sort of the business sector than they are from consumers.

[Kate Bullivant]

Journal finance reporter Elliot Brown. Elliot, thanks for joining us.

[Elliot Brown]

Thanks for having me.

[Kate Bullivant]

News Corp, owner of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI. And finally, a recent study has revealed men and women are using generative AI very differently. In fact, men are much more likely to use tools like ChatGPT than women. Out of roughly 200 million average users of ChatGPT, only 42% of them are female, and that number falls to 27% when you look at users accessing AI on their smartphone. Tech reporter Lisa Ward spoke to the study author who called the findings shocking.

[Lisa Ward]

So you see a real drop when you compare men to women overall, and they found the same trend in like, really diverse groups. So whether that's college kids, whether that's business owners, whether that was in Australia or in the US or in Canada, they looked at different groups across the globe and they were able to see this.

[Kate Bullivant]

And as Lisa explains, this gender gap could have consequences for the development of generative AI.

[Lisa Ward]

Artificial intelligence learns from everybody and develops in a way that is gender neutral. If men are the primary users, gender value could exasperate gender biases or stereotypes.

[Kate Bullivant]

For more on that study and how we use AI, check out our Tech News Briefing wherever you get your podcasts. And that's it for what's news for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bark. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Kate Bullivant for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, have a great weekend and thanks for listening.

[Foreign Correspondent]

Foreign.

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