The $7 Trillion Question: Can Sam Altman Actually Pull Off The Biggest Tech Bet Ever?

OpenAI’s Sam Altman is swinging for the fences—$7 trillion big. That’s not a typo. For context, it’s more than the entire U.S. government’s 2023 budget, and roughly the combined market cap of Google, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla combined.

Why the insane number? Because building AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) that outperforms humans at literally anything requires processing power that doesn’t exist yet. GPT-4 already cost $100+ million to train. The next generation? Exponentially more expensive.

The Reality Check

Here’s where it gets messy. Altman’s goal is to build dozens of new chip manufacturing plants. Sounds good until you realize:

The bottleneck isn’t money—it’s people. The semiconductor industry is short ~67,000 skilled workers by 2030. China dropped $300 billion into chips from 2021-2022 and still relies on foreign tech. Brain drain is real.

Supply chains are complex AF. Only a handful of companies (TSMC, Intel, Samsung) can even manufacture advanced AI chips. Scaling that requires coordinating everything from raw materials to facility construction to training. It’s not just throwing cash at the problem.

Who’s Actually In?

Altman’s reportedly courting:

• UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan (already deep in chip investments)
• SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son
• TSMC (likely to actually run the factories)

Sovereign wealth funds are sniffing around too—governments now see AI chips as a geopolitical chess piece.

The Prediction Game

Ark Invest thinks AI training costs will drop 75% annually until 2030. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang agrees. If that happens, Altman’s plan looks less insane. If it doesn’t? We’re talking about an unprecedented capital burn.

Bottom Line

Altman isn’t crazy—just operating at a scale we’ve never seen. The real question: can the supply chain actually keep up? Money is the easy part. Finding enough talent and manufacturing capacity? That’s the actual wall.