OpenAI faces a make-or-break year in 2026
- lastmansurfing
- Jan 2
- 1 min read
Sam Altman is like a juggler on a unicycle. Building all-knowing chatbots powered by cutting-edge artificial-intelligence models is too meek an ambition for OpenAI’s boss.
To keep his audience rapt, he has thrown ever more balls into the air. Custom chips? Of course. E-commerce? Why not. Business consulting? Too easy. A consumer device? You betcha.
At the same time, Mr Altman must keep a hand free to hold out his cap, for the show gets more expensive by the day. Leaked figures indicate that OpenAI expects to burn through $17bn of cash in 2026, up from $9bn in 2025, and that its losses will continue piling up in each of the subsequent three years.
It has already raised over $60bn from investors, more than any private company ever, nearly all of it since late 2022 when ChatGPT shot the previously obscure AI lab to prominence.
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