OpenAI Misses Key Revenue, User Targets in High-Stakes Sprint Toward IPO

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.OpenAI recently missed its own targets for new users and revenue, stumbles that have raised concern among some company leaders about whether it will be able to support its massive spending on data centers.Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has told other company leaders that she is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn’t grow fast enough, according to people familiar with the matter.Board directors have also more closely examined the company’s data-center deals in recent months and questioned Chief Executive Sam Altman’s efforts to secure even more computing power despite the business slowdown, the people said.The spending scrutiny is constraining Altman’s once-boundless ambitions ahead of a potential initial public offering that could take place by the end of the year. Friar and other executives are now seeking to control costs and instill more discipline in the business, at times putting them at odds with their CEO, people familiar with the issue said.“We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day,” Altman and Friar said in a joint statement.

Any suggestion that the pair are divided or pulling back on securing new computing resources is “ridiculous,” they said.For years, Altman has sought to lock up as much data-center capacity as possible, arguing that computing shortages were the biggest constraint to OpenAI’s growth. He went on a dealmaking spree last year that put OpenAI on the hook for some $600 billion in future spending commitments, and tied much of the tech sector’s success to OpenAI’s.The “buy everything” computing strategy was buoyed by ChatGPT’s seemingly