Business and economy·September 20, 2026, 20:32

OpenAI expects huge cash shortfall through 2030

AI-generated and checked against the sources listed below.

OpenAI expects that through 2030 the company will spend about $278 billion more than it earns. This is due to enormous investments in computing power and data centers for artificial intelligence.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, expects negative free cash flow of about $278 billion through 2030. Free cash flow is the money a company has left after paying its bills and investments. A negative figure means OpenAI is spending more money than it brings in.

Big investments in computing power

The large expense is partly due to investments of about $856 billion in compute and infrastructure. Compute is the computing power needed to train and run AI models, and infrastructure covers, among other things, the large data centers that keep the systems running.

The figures show how large a sum OpenAI is betting on investing in the development of artificial intelligence in the coming years.