OpenAI is preparing for one of the most expensive corporate buildouts in technology history. Internal forecasts reviewed by the FT show the company expecting about $278 billion in negative free cash flow from 2026 through 2030, even as it projects a steep rise in sales.
The gap is driven almost entirely by computing and infrastructure, which the company now estimates will cost roughly $856 billion over that period.
Those figures come from a July presentation prepared in connection with a computing agreement and later seen by the newspaper.
They describe a strategy that treats compute as the scarce resource that will determine who leads the next phase of artificial intelligence.
Training larger models and serving hundreds of millions of users requires vast clusters of chips, power, and data-center capacity.
OpenAI has therefore locked in long-term supply deals and is still expanding that footprint.
Revenue is expected to grow rapidly alongside the spending.
The company forecasts sales of $36 billion in 2026, rising to $350 billion in 2030.
Cumulative revenue over the five years is projected at about $840 billion. In other words, the business would generate nearly as much cash as it ...