Q&A: OpenAI's Stargate Man
"We see the fundamentals, and we were investing heavily in those." My conversation with Greg Brockman at OpenAI DevDay.
As OpenAI’s co-founder and president, Greg Brockman oversees Stargate, the company’s infrastructure initiative that’s striking a dizzying number of eye-popping deals with the likes of SoftBank, Oracle, Nvidia, and AMD.
I caught up with Brockman at OpenAI’s DevDay conference this week, just hours after he went on a TV interview blitz to announce that the company will spend tens of billions of dollars with AMD in the coming years. The deal signals a shift in how OpenAI is securing access to the hardware it needs to keep scaling, as it allows OpenAI to eventually own about 10% of AMD’s stock. Brockman expects to do other “creative” deals with additional suppliers.
In our conversation, Brockman explained the origin of Stargate and what he thinks people misunderstand about it. We also discussed the pressure that comes with OpenAI’s breakneck spending spree and growing concerns about an AI bubble. Stargate’s multibillion-dollar commitments necessitate that OpenAI’s revenue continues to grow at an aggressive pace, which is uncertain. Its future data centers could take years to materialize, and any delay could have significant impacts not only on OpenAI but also on the global economy.
Brockman, naturally, is undeterred: “People need to really look at the fundamentals and have a theory of why this is something that will matter as AI models get much better,” he said. “There’s a lot of froth that I see, but with serious fundamentals underneath.”
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity:
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