OpenAI Scales Back Spending Ambitions While Maintaining Massive Growth Targets

OpenAI is recalibrating its ambitious infrastructure plans, telling investors it now expects to spend approximately $600 billion on compute resources by 2030, down from the previously announced $1.4 trillion infrastructure commitment. The artificial intelligence company is providing this more conservative projection as it faces growing scrutiny over whether its expansion plans can generate sufficient revenue to justify the massive capital expenditures.

The spending revision comes as OpenAI finalizes a funding round that could exceed $100 billion, with strategic investors including Nvidia (potentially investing up to $30 billion), SoftBank, and Amazon. The company is targeting a pre-money valuation of $730 billion in this round, with approximately 90% of the funding coming from strategic partners rather than traditional venture capital.

Despite scaling back its spending projections, OpenAI maintains aggressive revenue targets. The company projects it will generate more than $280 billion in annual revenue by 2030, with nearly equal contributions from its consumer and enterprise segments. This represents a significant leap from its current performance, where it generated $13.1 billion in revenue in 2025, up from its $10 billion target. The company also reported burning through $8 billion in 2025, slightly below its $9 billion target.

OpenAI's flagship product, ChatGPT, continues to show strong user growth. The chatbot now supports more than 900 million weekly active users, up from 800 million as of October 2024. The company declared a "code red" in December 2024 to focus on improving the chatbot amid intensifying competition from rivals like Google and Anthropic. While ChatGPT experienced a growth dip in the fall of 2024, it has since returned to record highs in both weekly and daily active users.

The company's coding product, Codex, has also gained traction, surpassing 1.5 million weekly active users. Codex directly competes with Anthropic's Claude Code, which has seen significant adoption over the past year. This competition in the coding assistant market represents one of the key battlegrounds for AI companies as they seek to monetize their technology beyond general-purpose chatbots.

OpenAI's journey from a nonprofit research lab founded in 2015 to a potential $730 billion company seeking over $100 billion in funding illustrates the massive capital requirements of frontier AI development. The company's decision to revise its spending projections downward while maintaining ambitious revenue targets suggests a strategic pivot toward more sustainable growth rather than unchecked expansion.

The scaled-back infrastructure commitment may help address concerns from investors and industry observers about whether OpenAI can generate enough revenue to cover its costs. By tying its spending plan more directly to expected revenue growth, the company appears to be adopting a more measured approach to its capital allocation while still pursuing aggressive market opportunities in both consumer and enterprise AI applications.

The funding round, if completed at the projected size, would be one of the largest in tech history and underscores the massive capital requirements for companies competing at the frontier of AI development. The involvement of major strategic investors like Nvidia, which stands to benefit from increased demand for AI chips, suggests a coordinated approach to building out the AI ecosystem rather than purely financial investment.

As OpenAI navigates this next phase of growth, the balance between ambitious expansion and financial sustainability will be crucial. The company's ability to convert its massive user base and technological capabilities into profitable enterprise and consumer products will ultimately determine whether its revised $600 billion spending plan proves to be a prudent adjustment or merely a temporary pause in its infrastructure ambitions.