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Sam Altman's Next High-Wire Act: Getting OpenAI to Make More Money
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Credit...Photo Illustration by Javier Palma; Source Photographs by Rod Lamkey Jr. for The New York Times; Karsten Moran for The New York Times; GettyMr. Altman, who has faced criticism over OpenAI’s direction, has culled company projects and is trying to be more disciplined with strategy.Credit...Photo Illustration by Javier Palma; Source Photographs by Rod Lamkey Jr. for The New York Times; Karsten Moran for The New York Times; GettyListen · 8:45 min April 24, 2026Earlier this year, a group of OpenAI employees convened in a private chat to discuss the latest thing Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, had posted to social media. It was not the first time they had done so.The chat, which two people said they jokingly referred to as “Making Sam’s Tweets Reality,” nodded to their boss’s proclivity for announcing OpenAI’s plans on social media, where employees often found out about his ideas at the same time as the rest of the world. It was where they discussed how to build the surprise products he posted about. At Mr. Altman’s behest, OpenAI spent years pursuing any and all artificial intelligence projects, buoyed by billions in investment and its reputation of having a multiyear technological head start.Now things have changed, with stiffening competition from rivals like Anthropic, Google and even Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Mr. Altman has felt the heat — and has decided to shift strategy.In the past few months, OpenAI has culled projects it sees as “side quests” — a term describing nonessential tasks in a role-playing game — including its video generator, Sora. It has instead doubled down on moneymaking endeavors like coding tools that can be sold to businesses. The goal, insiders said, is to be more disciplined in the face of intensifying competition as OpenAI prepares for a potentially blockbuster initial public offering as soon as this year.The moves test the leadership of Mr. Altman, 41, who has faced rising criticism over OpenAI’s direction and his mutable management style.“The same company trying to push the frontier of A.I. is also being asked to show financial discipline,” said Brad Gastwirth, the global head of research at Circular Technology, a market intelligence firm. “That’s not an easy balance.”Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times acco...
Sam Altman's compute bet is paying off, but the bill is coming
Sam Altman's compute bet is paying off, but the bill is coming By Alistair Barr You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email. Author of the Tech Memo newsletter Sam Altman and Dario Amodei actively not holding hands. Ludovic MARIN / AFP via Getty Images 2026-04-29T09:00:01.316Z Sam Altman once said, "compute is destiny," and the AI market this year may be proving him right. Rival Anthropic has been signing its own big AI compute deals recently. How these deals will be paid for is still unclear. Big AI changes make this even harder to predict. In early December, Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, suggested that some rivals were overextending themselves in AI compute."There are some players who are YOLOing," Amodei said, hinting that rival OpenAI had signed too many AI compute deals and might struggle to afford them.But as demand surges and systems strain, the balance is shifting. OpenAI's aggressive push to lock in capacity is starting to look more pragmatic, while Anthropic faces outages and growing pains of its own, a reminder that in the AI race, having enough compute may matter just as much as building better models."Anthropic, in particular, is bad right now, and it's a mix of genuine downtime and really degraded service," said Lawrence Jones, founding engineer and AI lead at Incident.io, which helps companies like Netflix and Etsy manage outages.Altman once said, "compute is destiny," and the current situation suggests his aggressive push to secure massive capacity was prescient. Anthropic has since signed its own large compute deals, at least six months behind OpenAI. "OpenAI has been clearly ahead of the curve on compute," said Peter Gostev, AI capability lead at Arena.ai.Given this lead, it's been strange to read reports from The Information and other media outlets that Altman and his CFO, Sarah Friar, have been at odds over whether OpenAI signed too many compute deals. The Wall Street Journal followed this in a story late Monday.OpenAI dismissed the reported rift as "ridiculous," and Altman and Friar issued a statement saying they are aligned on acquiring as much compute as possible.Still, financial pressure is real. The Journal also reported OpenAI missed a revenue target and has yet to hit a goal of 1 billion weekly ChatGPT users. Without stronger revenue growth, funding expensive compute deals becomes more challenging.Even with surging revenue growth, as seen at Anthropic lately, it remai...
Sam Altman's Next High-Wire Act: Making OpenAI Profitable
Mr. Altman, who has faced criticism over OpenAI's direction, has culled company projects and is trying to be more disciplined with strategy.
Is OpenAI Falling Further Behind in the A.I. Race?
18 hours ago ... Why that matters: Altman has embraced hugely expensive ambitions to expand the company's computing capacity. But OpenAI has had to pull back on building its own ...
