OpenAI Confronts Major Hurdles Following Massive AI Deals
OpenAI hits turbulence after landmark AI agreements.
Scaling Pains
The AI giant faces operational strain as delivery deadlines loom. Internal systems stretch thin while competitors circle like sharks smelling blood in the water.
Market Pressures
Investors demand returns on billion-dollar bets. The hype cycle collides with reality—another tech darling learning that VC money comes with strings attached.
Regulatory Headwinds
Governments worldwide sharpen their scrutiny. Every breakthrough brings fresh compliance headaches, because nothing kills innovation faster than bureaucracy.
OpenAI's massive funding round feels like déjà vu—Silicon Valley repeating its favorite mistake: throwing money at problems until they become someone else's.
Major infrastructure challenges ahead
But this strategy comes with big risks when it comes to actually building everything.
Creating 17 gigawatts of power capacity would need about 17 nuclear power plants, and each one takes at least ten years to build. OpenAI representatives say they’re talking with hundreds of infrastructure companies across North America, but nothing is set in stone yet.
The American power grid already has problems, gas turbines are sold out until 2028, nuclear power takes a long time to set up, and renewable energy projects face political obstacles.
“I am extremely bullish about nuclear, advanced fission, fusion,” Altman said. “We should build more … a lot more of the current generation of fission plants, given the needs for dense, dense energy.”
This week made clear just how big Altman’s plans really are, as the OpenAI CEO started putting specific numbers on his ideas, some of them huge.
Industry experts back bold strategy
“Unlike previous technological revolutions or previous versions of the internet, there’s so much infrastructure that’s required, and this is a small sample of it,” Altman said Tuesday at OpenAI’s first Stargate location in Abilene, Texas.
This approach – direct, ambitious, and ignoring traditional thinking – has marked how Altman leads during this new period.
Deedy Das, partner at Menlo Ventures, said OpenAI’s infrastructure partnerships with Oracle might look extreme to some people, but he sees it differently.
“I don’t see this as crazy. I see it as existential for the race to superintelligence,” he said.
Das explained that data and computing power are the two most important things for making AI bigger, and he praised Altman for understanding early how much infrastructure would be needed.
“One of his gifts is reading the exponential and planning for it,” he added.
Past breakthroughs in AI haven’t come from better computer programs, he said, but from having access to massive computing power. That’s why companies like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are all trying to build bigger systems.
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