Greg Brockman, co‑founder and president of OpenAI, testified in a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk that the company plans to spend roughly $50 billion on compute this year. The testimony was presented during the legal proceedings between OpenAI and Elon Musk.
According to Brockman, OpenAI's spending on compute has risen sharply in recent years: in 2017 the company spent about $30 million on compute, while today those expenditures have grown to the tens of billions of dollars. Reuters reports that OpenAI plans to invest approximately $600 billion in the necessary infrastructure through 2030.
Background of the lawsuit
The testimony was part of the litigation between OpenAI and Elon Musk. Musk, a former co‑founder of OpenAI, sued the organization arguing that it illegally converted itself into a for‑profit entity and abandoned its original nonprofit mission. In the suit, Musk seeks for the organization to revert to nonprofit status.
Why this matters
The scale of compute spending highlights how resource‑intensive modern AI development and operation have become: large language models and other contemporary AI systems require substantial computational resources. OpenAI's planned investments, if realized, could further shape industry concentration and influence global AI infrastructure supply.
Details of the case and the testimony will continue to emerge through the court proceedings, where the parties' legal arguments and the organization's corporate form are central to the dispute.
Source note: Figures and statements reported by Reuters from the court testimony.
