OpenAI wants to build the next era of the web, and it’s shelling out billions to do it

By Lisa Eadicicco, Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — OpenAI was an artificial intelligence research lab little known outside of Silicon Valley before ChatGPT debuted in November 2022.

Three years later, OpenAI has become synonymous with the AI boom, making it the envy of its tech peers and thrusting CEO Sam Altman into President Donald Trump’s orbit. ChatGPT writes apps, plans trips and browses the web on users’ behalf. And OpenAI is making inroads into shopping, entertainment, education and government services — laying out plans to become more like a platform than a basic app in its developer conference on Monday.

As its software spills into more areas of online life, OpenAI is shelling out billions to become a leading player in the physical infrastructure for the AI future. With its latest major investment, announced on Monday, OpenAI will invest in 6 gigawatts of data center capacity powered by AMD chips. That deal follows similar agreements with Nvidia and Oracle.

In some ways, OpenAI’s expansion is circular — it needs new applications to bring in the money to fund its massive computing power. And it needs even more computing resources to power those new tools.

OpenAI’s rapid expansion comes against a challenging backdrop. Tech companies are competing fiercely to build the most powerful AI models, but some investors worry the market is in a bubble. What’s more, OpenAI is competing with tech giants such as Meta that already have vast tech ecosystems to help them expand and earn money from their AI tech. And OpenAI, which is not yet profitable, needs to find a way to continue raking in huge amounts of cash to fund its future endeavors.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

ChatGPT: More than just a chatbot

Google, Amazon and Meta laid the groundwork for the modern web by popularizing search engines, e-commerce and social media. OpenAI could do the same for the AI era by adding new capabilities to ChatGPT, which now has 800 million weekly active users, according to Altman.

OpenAI wants users to get things done online without ever having to leave ChatGPT, which could one day put the app at the core of how people use technology, much like Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android system. Soon ChatGPT will be able to create user playlists directly on Spotify or browse apartment listings on Zillow right from chats, OpenAI announced on Monday.

In late September, OpenAI launched a tool called Instant Checkout that lets users buy certain items directly through ChatGPT.

ChatGPT also now has a study mode, which tailors prompts and responses for students using the tool for schoolwork. And its new Sora 2 app is challenging Meta and TikTok with a scrollable feed of AI-generated short-form videos.

OpenAI could even challenge the most prominent device in consumers’ daily lives: the smartphone. The company is collaborating with former Apple design chief Jony Ive on a new AI hardware product, though details are slim. (OpenAI’s peers like Google and Meta are chasing hardware markets by releasing smart glasses with built-in AI assistants.)

OpenAI’s trajectory mirrors the rise of Google parent Alphabet, which built its business around indexing the web and now has a foothold in everything from consumer tech devices to health research.

Thomas Thiele, an AI expert at management consulting group Arthur D. Little, said he sees similarities between the two companies.

Google “has become this very broad corporation that has an inevitable footprint in everything we see on the internet,” Thiele said. “OpenAI is also aiming for a much bigger footprint.”

Billions on data centers

But scaling up those AI efforts means investing heavily in the sprawling data centers and infrastructure necessary to power them. OpenAI is shelling out billions of dollars to build a massive physical footprint, with plans for AI data centers across the United States and around the world.

“We need as much computing power as we can possibly get,” OpenAI President Greg Brockman told CNBC on Monday.

In January, the company announced a partnership with Oracle and SoftBank to invest up to $500 billion in a company called Stargate to build more AI infrastructure in the United States. The group’s first project, a one-million-square-foot data center, is already under construction in Abilene, Texas, with additional sites planned in Texas, New Mexico and the Midwest. OpenAI agreed in July to pay Oracle another $300 billion over five years to develop additional data center capacity for Stargate.

Last month, OpenAI said it would buy enough Nvidia AI chips to power 10 gigawatts of data center capacity in exchange for a $100 billion investment from the chipmaker. And while analysts expect Nvidia — the undisputed leader in AI chips — to remain OpenAI’s core infrastructure partner, the ChatGPT maker is now also hedging its bets with its AMD deal.

OpenAI has also signed onto partnerships to build out AI infrastructure abroad, including in the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates.

OpenAI’s aggressive expansion could be critical to keep up with rivals like Meta, Microsoft and Google that have spent decades building their digital ecosystems, said Daniel Keum, an associate professor at Columbia Business School. Google, for example, has the advantage of plugging its AI into popular services like Gmail and Google Docs.

“ChatGPT is great right now, but it’s not ChatGPT versus Copilot. It’s ChatGPT versus the Microsoft bundle,” said Keum. So for OpenAI, working with chipmakers to maintain the most advanced large language models could give it a leg up, he said.

But to carry out its ambitious infrastructure plans, OpenAI needs to continue bringing in a whole lot of cash.

The company is reportedly valued at $500 billion. But it’s still far from profitable; it posted an operating loss of $7.8 billion in the first half of 2025 and is still ramping up data center spending, according to a report from tech news site The Information.

It’s unclear whether OpenAI’s bid to turn ChatGPT into an all-encompassing platform will put it on the path to profitability. William Lee, a corporate investor at SuRo Capital, sees it as a “chicken-or-the-egg” problem, he said in an interview with CNN. Demand may be hard to gauge ahead of time, but the more OpenAI customizes ChatGPT for tasks like shopping and schoolwork, the more people could use it for those activities.

It’s a strategy that has worked for the tech giants of today — spend aggressively to make your technology essential to millions of users’ lives, figure out how to make money from them later.

OpenAI is clearly betting that it will pay off again.

“AI revenue is growing faster than, I think, almost any product in history,” Brockman told Bloomberg. “At the end of the day, the reason this compute power is so important, is so worthwhile for everyone to build, is because the revenue ultimately will be there.”

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