AIBRIEF
The Financial Times cited presentation pairs the five year cash burn with $350 billion in projected 2030 revenue, but the company's own deck has the cash running out by 2028.
OpenAI is telling investors it will burn through $278 billion in cash by 2030 to fund a compute build-out it expects to bring in roughly ten times that much in revenue by then, though the company's own presentation, as reported by the Financial Times, has the cash running out two years before the $350 billion revenue year arrives.
The negative free cash flow, or spending more cash than the company takes in, is concentrated in roughly $856 billion in cumulative compute and infrastructure spending through 2030, the FT-cited presentation shows. OpenAI projects revenue rising from about $36 billion this year to $350 billion in 2030.
OpenAI raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation, but the presentation has that cash exhausted by 2028, two years before the projected revenue inflection. Investors are seeing the deck now amid reported talks that could value OpenAI at about $1.2 trillion and ahead of a confidential June IPO filing. CEO Sam Altman said separately, in prior remarks, that the company will not go public in 2026, citing AI-safety concerns.
The $278 billion figure is itself an upward revision: OpenAI's prior projection was about $166 billion, per trade coverage, roughly $112 billion lower.
The figures remain internal projections. The Financial Times has not independently verified them, and disclosed 2024 losses were already about $5 billion, per earlier reporting. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.