Sam Altman has big, big plans to put AI at the center of every industry

Enrique Dans
Enrique Dans
Published in
2 min readFeb 10, 2024

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IMAGE: A drawing of an idealized chip with the capitalized letters AI on top
IMAGE: Aristal Branson — Pixabay

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reported to be trying to raise between $5 trillion and $7 trillion in funding, an inordinate amount that far exceeds usual funding rounds, larger than many sovereign wealth funds, and more than the combined value of the world’s two largest companies, Apple and Microsoft. Altman is approaching investors around the world to join a hugely ambitious pla involving multiple players.

What does Altman intend to do with all this money? Quite simply: increase the production capacity of chips for the development of artificial intelligence, and free the biggest bottleneck for the development of the industry and the application of AI at all levels and in all industries. Altman’s plans are so ambitious that he has had to meet with the Secretary of State for Commerce, Gina Raimondo, to lay out his plans.

AI is the technology of the moment: with OpenAI already turning over more than $2 billion, and with all projects seeking funding including AI in their presentations to prospective investors, the technology is a game changer for all technology companies, which are forced not only to offer it to maintain their position in the market.

The development of much more chips for algorithm training and inference tasks would also change the industry’s power equation, in…

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Enrique Dans
Enrique Dans

Professor of Innovation at IE Business School and blogger (in English here and in Spanish at enriquedans.com)