Sam Altman is trying to raise billions of dollars to reshape the global semiconductor industry, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The CEO of OpenAI is in talks with investors to raise money for an ambitious multi-billion dollar technology initiative.
This move will enhance the world's ability to make chips, expand its ability to operate artificial intelligence, and much more.
The newspaper reported that the cost of such a step would range between $5 trillion and $7 trillion.
The fundraising plan faces significant hurdles and aims to overcome limitations that have hampered OpenAI's growth, including the lack of expensive AI chips needed to train large language models.
Sam Altman often laments the lack of such chips to support OpenAI's quest for artificial general intelligence.
By the standards of corporate fundraising, the amount mentioned by Altman is very large, exceeding the national debt of some major global economies and giant sovereign wealth funds.
The fundraising negotiations are the latest example of Sam Altman's ambitious plan to change the world.
Ultraman has invested heavily in startups that aim to generate cheap energy through nuclear fusion and extend human lifespan by a decade.
The power was also included in Ultraman's new fundraising plan. Because AI constructs consume a lot of energy.
Realizing Sam Altman's ambitions for chips and other AI-enabled areas will require convincing a complex global network of funders, industry partners and governments.
“OpenAI has had productive discussions about expanding the global infrastructure and supply chain for chips, energy and data centers that are critical to AI and other industries that rely on it,” an OpenAI spokesperson said.
Altman suggested that OpenAI would partner with multiple investors, chipmakers and energy providers who would collectively raise money to build chip factories that would then be operated by existing chipmakers.
Discussions are still at an early stage, the full list of potential investors is not yet known, and efforts may continue for years but may not ultimately be successful.