Sam Altman · 2025-09-23
BlogAbundant Intelligence
Authors: Sam Altman
Why it matters
AI demand growth has been astonishing and is expected to accelerate further
Key claims
- AI demand growth has been astonishing and is expected to accelerate further
- Access to AI may become a fundamental economic driver or even a human right
- Vision is to build a factory producing one gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week
- Execution will take years and require innovation across chips, power, construction, and robotics
Radar summary
Summary
Sam Altman frames the trajectory of AI demand as unprecedented and likely to accelerate, arguing that access to AI will become a core economic driver and potentially a fundamental human right. He emphasizes that meeting this demand requires a massive expansion of both inference and training compute, positioning compute as the binding constraint on what AI can deliver.
Altman outlines a concrete infrastructure vision: building what he describes as a "factory" capable of producing one gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week. He acknowledges the extreme difficulty and multi-year timeline required, citing the need for innovation across the full stack—chips, power, construction, and robotics—and frames it as the most important infrastructure project ever. He expresses particular enthusiasm for building this capacity in the United States, arguing that other nations are currently outpacing the US on chips fabrication and energy production.
Altman signals that OpenAI will share more details in the coming months, including partnerships and—later in the year—the novel financing structures under consideration. He notes that because expanding compute directly unlocks revenue, OpenAI sees room for new approaches to funding this buildout.
- AI demand growth has been astonishing and is expected to accelerate further
- Access to AI may become a fundamental economic driver or even a human right
- Vision is to build a factory producing one gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week
- Execution will take years and require innovation across chips, power, construction, and robotics
- Altman frames this as potentially the most important infrastructure project ever
- OpenAI wants much of this built in the US, citing slower US progress on fabs and energy
- More details on plans and partners coming in the next couple of months
- Financing details and novel funding structures to be discussed later in the year
Source material
Full source text
Growth in the use of AI services has been astonishing; we expect it to be even more astonishing going forward.
As AI gets smarter, access to AI will be a fundamental driver of the economy, and maybe eventually something we consider a fundamental human right.
Almost everyone will want more AI working on their behalf.
To be able to deliver what the world needs—for inference compute to run these models, and for training compute to keep making them better and better—we are putting the groundwork in place to be able to significantly expand our ambitions for building out AI infrastructure.
If AI stays on the trajectory that we think it will, then amazing things will be possible.
Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer.
Or with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to provide customized tutoring to every student on earth.
If we are limited by compute, we’ll have to choose which one to prioritize; no one wants to make that choice, so let’s go build.
Our vision is simple: we want to create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week.
The execution of this will be extremely difficult; it will take us years to get to this milestone and it will require innovation at every level of the stack, from chips to power to building to robotics.
But we have been hard at work on this and believe it is possible.
In our opinion, it will be the coolest and most important infrastructure project ever.
We are particularly excited to build a lot of this in the US; right now, other countries are building things like chips fabs and new energy production much faster than we are, and we want to help turn that tide.
Over the next couple of months, we’ll be talking about some of our plans and the partners we are working with to make this a reality.
Later this year, we’ll talk about how we are financing it; given how increasing compute is the literal key to increasing revenue, we have some interesting new ideas.