嘉宾访谈·中文精读

OpenAI CFO 莎拉·弗里亚尔:IPO、AI 竞争、新设备与千亿美元算力支出

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar: IPO, AI Rivalries, New Device, and Spending $100B+ on Compute

Sarah Friar 谈 OpenAI 的 IPO 时间表、与 Anthropic 和谷歌的 AI 军备竞赛、算力瓶颈与新设备、公司经济模型,以及芯片、云和广告业务战略。

官方音频00:00 / --:--

本期章节点时间可跳到音频对应位置

  1. 0:00OpenAI CFO 莎拉·弗里亚尔做客节目!
  2. 0:31OpenAI 如何看待其 IPO 时间表
  3. 3:31OpenAI、Anthropic、谷歌:AI 军备竞赛
  4. 7:43应对算力紧缺与 AI 瓶颈,设备预览!
  5. 15:53OpenAI 的经济学
  6. 26:08进军芯片与云
  7. 29:32OpenAI 的广告业务与战略
中文精读由 AI 基于原始节目改写,非官方翻译,可能存在偏差或错误;观点归属与表述以原音频与官方文稿为准。说明

Anthropic 刚刚秘密递交 S-1,OpenAI 的 CFO 萨拉·弗莱尔(Sarah Friar)就坐进了 All-In 的录音室。杰森·卡拉卡尼斯(Jason Calacanis)的第一个问题直冲这件事:Anthropic 抢先递交,是不是意味着 OpenAI 在 IPO 这件事上排到了第三?

她没接这个框架。

「IPO 是里程碑,不是目的地」

弗莱尔的回答是,现在什么都说明不了,因为接下来还要过 SEC 那一关,谁也不知道要多久。她对这件事的真实态度是这样的:

「归根结底,IPO 是个里程碑,不是目的地。我经常跟团队说,别把公司当成在跑向某个终点。它只是另一种融资方式。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

今年 3 月,OpenAI 完成了 1220 亿美元的融资。她说这笔钱只有一个目的,把选择权最大化。「CFO 的职责是创造可选性,不只是为这家公司,是为我们正在经历的这个时代。」

萨克斯(David Sacks)追问这是不是史上最大的私募融资,她确认了,而且大出好几个数量级。参照物是人类历史上最大的一次 IPO,沙特阿美,约 300 亿美元。

关于「谁先上市」,她给了个很干脆的说法:

「到最后,市场是一台称重机,不是一台人气机。没人记得是 Google 还是 Yahoo 先上市,是 Lyft 还是 Uber 先上市。媒体喜欢戏剧性,但最后我们要建的是大的、可持续的、能扛住时间的公司。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

杰森问,AI 公司早上市是不是有优势。她提到一个结构性事实:市场上的钱不缺,回购和并购一直在把现金还给股东,大量资金在观望。缺的是能把钱变成长期价值的东西。

「我们的策略跟他们不一样」

杰森问得更直接:Anthropic 原本落后,现在在开发者和企业市场上已经超过 OpenAI,这是怎么发生的?

弗莱尔换了框架。她说 OpenAI 建的是「AI 层」,一层基础设施,上面开很多个口子通向世界。ChatGPT 通向消费者,Codex 通向开发者,Frontier 通向企业。

她给了一组数字:ChatGPT 周活超过 9 亿,已经成为名词也是动词,大多数人第一次接触 AI 就是通过它。Codex 周末刚过 500 万用户,而今年 1 月这个数字几乎是从零开始。经济研究团队告诉她,增长最快的大洲是非洲,增长最快的语言是阿塞拜疆语和哈萨克语。

这套打法的复利在哪?同一个模型服务所有入口,用户越多、数据越多、个性化能力越强;模型越大,单位 token 成本越低,毛利率越高,能负担的算力越多,而算力在当下是真正的竞争优势。

杰森又问,去年是不是摊子铺得太开,一边做 Sora 一边做新硬件,企业业务反而被耽误了。

「这个世界喜欢二元对立:你是消费者公司,还是企业公司?事实是我们两边都是,现在收入大概五十对五十。企业这块我跑得很凶,上周去了波士顿的 Thermo Fisher,见了纽约一堆银行,周五跟 Travelers 通电话,今天早上还在跟一家科技公司开会。不分行业,人们现在是真的在动 AI。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

她顺带提到新来的收入负责人 Denise Dresser,去年 12 月到岗,用她的原话是「一股自然之力」。

她还给了一条用量阶梯,解释为什么要坚持提供大量免费服务:免费用户每天大约问 7 个问题,第一个付费层级大约翻倍到 15 个,Plus(20 美元档)大约是免费用户的 3 倍,Pro 大约是 11 倍。

「记得你刚拿到翻盖手机的时候吗?你说,嗯,也就打个电话吧。现在同一部手机,你想想它替你做了多少事。智能这件事,现在就在走同一条路。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

一吉瓦等于 100 亿美元年收入

萨克斯提醒她,大约 18 个月前她提过一个影响了很多人的框架:吉瓦换现金。一吉瓦的算力,大约对应 OpenAI 每年 100 亿美元的收入,这个比例可以外推到 Anthropic、Gemini。

她先确认了稀缺这件事。「我们的业务正在爬一堵垂直的需求之墙,token 就是不够用。」

「去年我们因为在外头买那么多算力,背后没少挨箭。现在只能说谢天谢地当时买了。因为到 2026 年,我们的算力还是不够。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

她列了一串瓶颈,并且说这些瓶颈会来回移动:能源、土地和电力、能让项目快速开工的监管环境、机架和芯片本身(内存价格正在飙升)、人才(她在斯坦福做理事,公开表达了对教育系统输出不足的担心),最后是信任。

信任被她放进了「供应链」里,这点值得单独说。她说那天萨姆·奥尔特曼正在密歇根州萨林(Saline),两个小时后要给一座 1 吉瓦的数据中心剪彩,这是 OpenAI 与 Oracle 综合体的一部分,节目里算是提前剧透。

密歇根那块地,和「谢谢,但不用了」

弗莱尔在 Nextdoor 工作过 7 年,她说那段经历教会她一件事:你不能自上而下告诉一个社区它需要什么,因为它会告诉你「谢谢,但不用了,我自己知道我要什么」。

所以在这类项目上,OpenAI 给社区开了三个条件:

  • 不抬高居民电价。基础设施和电力的成本由公司自己承担,不会转嫁给电费缴纳者
  • 带来 2500 个工会岗位,电工、暖通这类实打实的工作
  • 缴税。仅这一座数据中心就要向密歇根州缴纳 10 亿美元

另外还有 4500 万美元投进教育,用于发放 Codex 额度。

「我绝不会雇一个不会用 Excel 的财务人员。今天我大概也不会雇一个不会用 Codex 这类工具的财务人员。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

每 token 成本两年降 97%,但算力本身在涨价

有人问资本配置模型:过去二十年那些超额回报的公司,都找到了一个回报率远高于同行的资本投放口,然后把所有钱砸进去。对 OpenAI 来说那个口子是什么?

她从客户价值讲起。Thermo Fisher 想更快完成患者筛查、更快拿到 FDA 批准。某些癌症从确诊到生命终点只有几周,一个突破从四周缩到两周,可能就是生与死的差别。这家公司还有大约 3.8 万名现场销售,走进美国任何一间实验室,设备上都是 Thermo Fisher 的标。他们想让自己的销售团队更高效,所以现在 OpenAI 内部 Codex 增长最快的部门不是研发,是 go-to-market。

然后才轮到毛利率。成本项里最大的输入是算力,而算力这边有一条凶猛的通缩曲线:

「从四代模型到 5.4,单位推理成本大概降了 97%。这发生在两年内。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

最新发布的 5.5,OpenAI 把价格上调了一倍,但按每个 token 的实际花费算,客户仍然拿到 20% 到 30% 的下降,因为新模型每个 token 的效率高得多。

她提醒了一个容易犯的错误:如果按今天的成本结构做资本配置决策,很可能会给未来的结果定价错误,必须往成本曲线的前方多探一点。

另一个数字更直观:建一座 1 吉瓦的 AI 算力,从土地、电力、外壳到芯片全算进去,大约要 500 亿美元。密歇根萨林那座,要到 2027 年底或 2028 年初才可能产出算力。也就是说她现在花的钱,买的是 2028 年以后的算力,而她最缺算力的时间点是 2030、2031、2032 年。

关于怎么预测多年后的算力需求,她给了一个反常识的假设:单看吉瓦,算力本身正在变贵,因为电力在涨、内存在涨。但从客户那一端看,每个 token 的售价会便宜得多。原因整个落在芯片侧的通缩上,她不指望模型侧的效率提升来兜底。像 5.4 那种巨大的预训练模型,又贵又难服务,但有时候公司就是要做那么一次大预训练,然后再用多轮模型迭代把成本压下来。

魔方:从一朵云一颗芯,到多朵云多颗芯

弗莱尔用魔方打比方。两年前的 OpenAI 是魔方最底下那一格:一家云服务商(微软 Azure)、一颗芯片(英伟达)、一个产品(ChatGPT)、一个价格(每月 20 美元)。

今天的魔方是多维的。云这边,Oracle、CoreWeave、微软、GCP、AWS,外加一批小型 neoscaler。芯片这边,英伟达仍是最优先级的伙伴,秋季的下一轮大训练会跑在 Vera Rubin 上,再往后是 Simon 系列;同时有 AMD 的芯片在管道里,Cerebras 已经上线,低延迟,适合需要实时写代码的开发者,还有一颗与博通合作的自研芯片。

她解释了为什么非得多云:云服务商在效果上把 CapEx 转成了 OpEx,你用多少付多少,等于在一定程度上借用了它们建设和融资的能力。

再往前走是 built to suit。OpenAI 与 SoftBank Energy 在德州合建的数据中心已经宣布,这部分自掏的资本开支会更多。她承认 OpenAI 目前还不是投资级主体,拿不到低成本债务,所以跟伙伴合作这件事很关键。

萨克斯问了个更结构性的问题:五年后这个栈会不会彻底融在一起?传统市场里,英伟达只卖芯片,微软只做云,应用公司只做应用。现在每家都在做所有事:OpenAI 在流片,英伟达在做开源模型还成了算力的买方,Google 是云公司却有芯片也有模型。

「大家都在往离客户最近的那一层站,因为通常那一层拿走生态里最大的一块利润。没人想被抽象掉。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

她说一年前业内还在讨论大模型的商品化,结果恰恰相反,因为 agent 那一层起来了。她提到「harness」这个词,harness 带来的是上下文和记忆。

她的 Codex 里有一个巨大的记忆文件,它知道她是 OpenAI 的 CFO,知道她喜欢怎么写东西、怎么说话,知道她关心什么,也知道她是两个青少年的妈妈。这些记忆让模型对她更强大。而把这些带进企业环境,才是真正有意思的地方。

她讲了一个华尔街的类比:所有数据都告诉你,财报电话会之后这只股票该怎么走。你打电话给交易员,交易员说,不,这只股票不会涨。你问为什么,数字明明是这样的。交易员说,我知道有家基金压力很大,需要减仓,这会在接下来一周把股价打下去。

「那种直觉,在每一行里都存在。模型现在正在和一家公司的记忆、上下文、直觉接上。这才是让 CEO 和 C 层真正兴奋的地方。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

今年年底会有一款新设备

杰森把话题引到硬件。弗莱尔透露得不多,但确认了三件事:设备在今年年底揭晓,她见过也试过,是乔纳森·艾维(Jony Ive)的团队在做。

「Jony 和他的团队真正擅长的是把人性带进设备。我不太会解释这件事,但你看到它的时候,你会有感觉。它很自然,而且很讨人喜欢。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

杰森问是不是像第一次拿到 iPhone 那样的范式转移,她说感觉非常自然,而且「很可爱」。她说技术本身可以是机械的,但好的设计会让一切消失,简单是最难的。

她还讲了一句更宏观的观察:上一代技术教会我们用拇指说话,这是一种病,大家走路都低着头。现在方向是多模态,你对着工具说话,她每天都跟 Codex 说话。而这需要多得多的实时算力。

她顺带承认了一个取舍:因为算力不够,OpenAI 在视频上做过很艰难的选择。Sora 还在做,但视频这条线没有结束。

广告:把 Google 和 Meta 生个孩子

杰森抛出最后一个大问题:我们这辈人最伟大的三个消费者业务是 iPhone、Meta 的广告网络、Google 的广告网络,其中两个是广告生意,连苹果都在往广告里伸手。Anthropic 在超级碗上还拿这事嘲讽过 OpenAI。广告到底是不是让全世界免费用上智能的答案?

她的两条原则:结果永远基于模型本身,不能因为某个东西是赞助的就往前排;同时永远保留一个无广告层级,给不想要广告的人。

为什么这个模式可能成立,她引用了弗里德伯格(David Friedberg)的比喻:

「如果 Google 和 Meta 生个孩子,那就是 ChatGPT。我们至少占搜索市场 11%,实际份额要高得多,因为 Google 那边页面刷新算一次,ChatGPT 里一整段对话可能问了 50 个问题,也只算一次。」(萨拉·弗莱尔)

她的判断是,ChatGPT 手里同时握着意图和记忆。搜索给你意图,你告诉它你要买什么;Meta 给你人群画像,靠相似性去推。而 ChatGPT 知道你正在做什么,也知道你是谁。把记忆和上下文放在意图旁边,广告平台的威力会很不一样。有了这个,才有可能付得起让全世界免费用上智能这件事。

不过她说得很清楚:如果只优化今天,她会让每一个 token 都流向 API,因为 API 的每 token 收入是消费者端的一个数量级。但 OpenAI 下的是一盘更大的棋,把 AI 当成像电一样的基础设施层,最终服务全世界,包括消费者、小企业、大企业和政府。

节目最后,萨克斯请她收尾,她用了一句自称「长期听众、第一次打进电话」的开场白完成了整场。

  • 盯住「每吉瓦对应多少收入」这个换算率。它比任何单季财报都更能反映一家 AI 公司的真实规模,也能帮你判断电力、土地、芯片这些上游环节的定价是否合理。
  • 企业软件和服务的投资逻辑正在变。弗莱尔讲的那段「交易员的直觉」,本质是说模型的价值不在数据本身,在于把一家公司没写下来的经验接进上下文。做企业 AI 创业的话,护城河建在记忆和上下文层,不建在模型调用层。
  • 算力的采购窗口比想象中靠前。2026 和 2027 年的算力基本已经被锁定,2030 年之后的算力才是现在下注的对象。任何跟算力、电力、数据中心相关的决策,时间尺度要拉到五年以上,短周期的产能新闻参考价值有限。
  • 如果你在评估 OpenAI、Anthropic、SpaceX 这几家潜在的超大 IPO,记住弗莱尔那句「市场是称重机」,先用三年以上的收入结构去估值,别被谁先递交 S-1 这类消息驱动交易。
  • 对个人来说,最实在的一条是她那句用人标准:不会用 Excel 的财务人员她不要,今天不会用 Codex 这类工具的财务人员她也不要。找一个你所在行业里对应的工具,把它用成肌肉记忆。
文稿来自 All-In 官网(allin.com)发布的官方 Transcript,说话人按官网分轨数据标注,个别段落可能张冠李戴。
Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): OpenAI's CFO, Sarah Fryer. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:02): We gotta get right to it. You have just completed what I regard as the most successful fundraising round in history. We're gonna raise actually north of a $120,000,000,000. Sarah Friar (00:00:13): We think AI is the biggest era that we've seen to date. We're just starting to understand what it's gonna mean for global productivity, and with that, you know, hopefully more affluence, better lives for everyone. Luck is whatever the preparation meets opportunity, but you gotta grab it. Long time listener, first time caller. Quite exciting to get to hang out with all the bros here. Hello. David Sacks (00:00:39): We weren't sure how to start this off, but I thought the best thing was to allow our erstwhile cryptozar to maybe Sarah Friar (00:00:45): Of course. David Sacks (00:00:46): Save comments and David Friedberg (00:00:47): I saw an article today. I think it might have been in the Wall Street Journal that the perception is that there's an advantage to IPO ing earlier if you're an AI company. So now we know SpaceX is going, and then the question is when's when are OpenAI and Anthropic gonna go? And I'm curious, how do you think about that? Do you think there is a little bit of a race on or, you know, you haven't made a decision about that yet? Sarah Friar (00:01:12): Like, in the end, an IPO, I say this to the team all the time, it's a milestone. It is not a destination. Do not run your company as if that's some sort of destination. It's just another way to fundraise. We just did you heard me on the the sizzle reel, raise a $122,000,000,000 in March, and that was to give ourselves maximum flexibility. I feel like my job as a CFO is create optionality for this, not just this company, but just this era that we're living in. David Sacks (00:01:44): So, Sarah, was that that point in fundraising, is that the biggest private republic up until the SpaceX IPO? Sarah Friar (00:01:51): It is. Right. It is by orders of magnitude. I think the largest IPO to date was the Earth, Saudi Aramco, which was about $30,000,000,000. Jason Calacanis (00:01:59): Right. So it Sarah Friar (00:01:59): is actually incredible that you're going to have potentially three IPOs at a scale that will be bigger even than 2001, 2000 that that time frame, there was a lot that went on in the market too. But the market has grown. And by the way, the other thing going on in the market is like, if you look at buybacks, m and a, and so on, it's actually a lot of capital keeps being returned back to shareholders in cash. So there is a lot of money sitting on the sidelines. But in the spirit of, like, the question, David, I think in the end, you wanna you'll be measured. Right? It's the in the end, the market is a weighing machine, not a popularity machine. No one remembers who went first, Google or Yahoo, Lyft or Uber. And I say that not because whether I wanna be first or second, but I just think it, you know, the the press loves a bit of drama, but in the end, we're gonna have to build big, sustainable, durable companies. And fundraising will be a key component of doing exactly that. David Sacks (00:02:53): Sarah, breaking news. Oh my god. Sarah Friar (00:02:56): So many people coming out Jason Calacanis (00:02:57): with Breaking news. I know. Speaker 6 (00:02:58): It is it is hard balancing balancing four four interviewers interviewers at at the the same same time. Time. It's It's okay. This is my Sarah Friar (00:03:03): world by the So I'm Jason Calacanis (00:03:04): good with this. Jason. Anthropic just confidentially filed their s one. So does that mean you're third place in terms of the filing? Sarah Friar (00:03:13): It does not mean anything yet because you have to run now the gauntlet of the SEC and who knows how long that takes for anyone. Jason Calacanis (00:03:21): Yeah. Is there though a benefit to them going forward? And I think unpacking the rivalry with Anthropic is on everybody's minds. So, just, I guess you can't talk too much about IPOs. So, I'll just pivot to Anthropic was far behind and now they've really, I think everybody would agree in the industry now blown past OpenAI in terms of developers and corporations and it seems revenue. So did how did that happen at OpenAI when you had such a tremendous lead? How did Anthropic blow past you guys? Sarah Friar (00:03:57): So let's talk a little bit about a strategy. Our strategy is different. Right? So we are building the AI layer, the infrastructure, and it's really important that there's a single foundation, but then with many interfaces out into the world. So ChatGPT is one to the consumer. Over 900,000,000 people use ChatGPT weekly, and it's become the noun and the verb. It's how most people experience AI for the first time. Kind of fun fact, our economic research team just showed me the fastest growing continents now are Africa, probably not totally surprising since it started a small base. Fastest growing languages are Azerbaijani Kazakhstani. What is it's Kazakh. Which is kind of incredible to talk about where it's going. So multiple interfaces, ChatGPT. Of course, there's Codex just hit 5,000,000 over the weekend. We're really proud of that coming from almost zero in January. David Sacks (00:04:54): 5,000,000 users. Speaker 6 (00:04:55): Go Sarah Friar (00:04:56): Codex. Help me prepare for this little special up here too. There's of course Frontier, our enterprise offering, and everything every other way that we can get out there to reach businesses of all sizes. That is a very different strategy. We think that because it's served up on one model, there's a compounding element of advantage that comes from that. More users, more data, more ability to personalize, ChatGeePTS as a front door. As models get bigger, there's more efficiency that should lower the overall cost to give you a token in the world. That should compound to higher gross margins, ultimately more ways to pay for compute, and then access to compute is one of the really big competitive advantages at the moment. So, you know, we have to all run our own races, but we all have to recognize we're part of an ecosystem that also needs to bring people along collectively. Jason Calacanis (00:05:48): Did you spread a little bit too then too many projects? People were talking about this new gadget, Sora, and and then maybe not enough focus on enterprise. Is that a fair assessment of if there was a mistake in the last year? David Sacks (00:06:00): That was it? Sarah Friar (00:06:01): No. I I think that the world loves to go to binary isms. Like, are you a consumer company, Sarah? Are you an enterprise company? The reality is we're very much both. We're not one or the other. Right now, our revenue is getting pretty balanced about fifty fifty. We are incredibly focused on the enterprise. Like, I spend so much of my time with I mean, just even in the last week, I could tell you I've been to see Thermo Fisher in Boston, I was with a bunch of banks in New York, I was on the phone with Travelers on Friday, I spent this morning on the phone with a tech company. It doesn't matter the vertical, people are really moving on AI right now. Our new head of revenue, Denise Dresser, in seats since December. She is a force of nature. And so I think the enterprise broadly speaking is really firing on all cylinders. But we don't want to leave the consumer behind. Remember, our mission at OpenAI is AGI for the benefit of humanity. Not for the benefit of humanity who can pay or for the benefit of humanity who live in an enterprise, but very broad based. It's why we offer so much free because we want people to get a taste. Once they get a taste of intelligence, the ability to come up a commitment curve is incredible. Our free users do about seven turns, seven questions a day. Our first paid tier do double that, about 15. Our our real paid tier, the plus, $20, hopefully you're all on it or higher, about three x, and pro, about 11 x over a free user. So remember when you got your flip phone and you're like, yeah, I don't know, it does make some calls. Now, that same phone, think of all the things it does for you. That's the path we're on with intelligence right now. Sorry, David Sacks (00:07:42): You said something very influential. I think it was about eighteen months ago for a lot of us in the industry where you framed a very simple economic trade off, which was gigawatts to cash. And I think you said one gigawatt is roughly equivalent to about $10,000,000,000 a year of revenue to OpenAI. So comment number one was this one gigawatt equals $10,000,000,000 a year of revenue for you. But it's not just you because you can probably extrapolate that to Anthropic and other folks, Gemini. Yep. But then you were really at the forefront of getting access to power and data centers and powered land. It seemed a little crazy, but now it looks like, hold on, there's a huge deficit of supply. Can you just unpack all of that and explain Yeah. Both the spectrum of where we are and then those specific economics and if that's So Sarah Friar (00:08:30): first of all, yes, compute is a very scarce resource at the moment. Mean, I what we see in our business, we're going up that kind of vertical wall of demand right now, and there's just not enough tokens available. So we I'm very grateful that I got to work alongside Greg and Sam. I think we're very pressing on this. And last year, we were definitely taking some, you know, arrows in the back about why are they out there buying all this compute, and I think, thank God we did, because in '26, we still won't have enough compute. Where are we on the compute continuum? There's kind of choke points everywhere, and and I think they will continue to move back and forth. I mean, you all talk about this and know this as well as anyone here, whether it's energy, first and foremost, land power, how we get regulatory environments such that we can build quickly. When you get into the racks and chips themselves, clearly, do we have enough in that supply chain? Memory spike is is on at the moment. Access to great talent. Do we have enough people coming through our education system? I really worry about this right now. I'm a trustee at Stanford, and, you know, I see just that, you know, we need to keep the focus on education and science. And then trust. I mean, I actually put that as part of the supply chain. Sam right now is in Celine, Michigan. He's gonna be cutting the ribbon in about two hours, so you are getting a sneak preview, but they told me it was okay to say it in the room. That will be, you know, sticking shovels in the ground on a one gigawatt data center, which is part of our Oracle complex. Really important there on the trust side that we don't leave communities behind. I spent seven years of my life working at Nextdoor, doing the hard work of what it means to be local. And you cannot tell people from top down what they need, because they will tell you thank you, but no thank you. I will tell you what I need. And so in a data center like that, we're actually spending a lot of time in the community saying, number one, we're not going to raise your electricity bills. We're going to pay for our infrastructure and our power. Sarah Friar (00:10:32): It will not be the rate payer that has to pay. Number two, we're going to bring jobs, 2,500 union jobs, good jobs, like electricians, HVAC, and so on. We are going to pay our taxes, $1,000,000,000 in taxes just for that data center into Michigan. And on top of that, we're going to invest $45,000,000 going into education for Codex credits to do what you all talked about this weekend. It's like anyone who's not, like, coming in facile to their new job, I have teenagers using Codex, it would be like I would never hire a finance person who didn't know how to use Excel. And I pretty much probably wouldn't hire a finance person today that doesn't know how to use a tool like Codex. So that you know, so when I think about investment, we're having to invest ahead of demand. That means we need to both be able to find all of the compute and all the pieces and then pay for it. So that goes back to your capital question on IPO. And then on the other side on the economics, look, the economics do continue to get better. They're getting better on multiple fronts. I think we are doing a better job of actually showing true value to our customers. And I think you get beyond kind of a cost plus type pricing into something that feels more akin to the value being created. Now, scarcity of tokens helps because it's causing a bit of a compression in that David Sacks (00:11:50): in just, like, without specific names, where you know the landscape exists today in terms of all the power that's available and all the demand that exists across everybody. Yep. What's going to happen over the next year just at the current course and speed of what is available? Of the data centers that's available, of the tokens that's available, of the infrastructure that's available, for everybody. Because, you know, I told this story last week, but, you know, I'll use Anthropic, one of the frustrating things is at some point it just says, you know, 10:30. It's like, alright, Shmoth, see you at 02:30. Sarah Friar (00:12:22): Yeah. David Sacks (00:12:22): And that's not a viable experience. Right. And in fairness to ChatGPT, actually, I've never had that with. Sarah Friar (00:12:29): Yeah. We we're quite generous with our tokens. And again, on purpose, we're trying to drive access so people understand. If you're on that free tier, not actually getting the latest model, but we're trying to put it in your hands so you get a sense for it, by the way. Because, you know, if you're a kid doing homework, like, I think about when I grew up in the Encyclopedia Britannica's showed up at the front door in Northern Ireland in a tiny little community in the middle of the troubles, it was like the clouds parted. And so we wanna make sure that people get that feeling, by the way. But the landscape right now, in '26, if you wanna buy more compute, good luck to you. Like, tell me because I don't know where else to find it. I mean, as you know Elon has something. Jason Calacanis (00:13:11): What I Sarah Friar (00:13:11): was gonna say, Elon ironically ended up being the one person that had too much compute in a way, but good job on, like, figuring out how to sell that off. In '27, it's pretty limited as well, frankly. Now there's a couple of things shifting around. When we talk about compute, there's training that mostly still all happens here in The United States for USG reasons, for making sure that a national asset, in effect, is happening on US soil. For inference, we want that to be global. And I think particularly in an agentic world, you want much more kind of real time. Even for things like Sora and video, which by the way, yeah, we have you know, we had to make a really tough choice because we didn't have enough compute. Jason Calacanis (00:13:56): And we said a lot. Sarah Friar (00:13:57): Right now, yeah, video does. But video is not over. Like, in particular, when you start to think about where AI is taking us into more multimodality. So remember, we've all been taught by the last generation of technology to talk with our thumbs. It's a disease. You walk around, everyone's looking down, they don't look up anymore. Teenagers sit on my sofa at night and talk to each other with their thumbs. I'm like, who are you talking to? And my son will be like, him. I'm like, okay. Talk. Multimodality is here. Hopefully, I think you all talked about it this weekend. You're talking to your tool. I talk to Codex every day. And so that is changing rapidly, but that is gonna need much more kind of real time compute because it's an odd experience that I was talking to Jamat. Jason Calacanis (00:14:43): Johnny, have this puck Totally. These earpieces. So maybe tell us a little bit about that process. You've admitted it now. Sarah Friar (00:14:49): If I if I tell you it's an earpiece, Johnny will come and steal my teenage son. I might give it to him, Jason Calacanis (00:14:53): give him to But you you do believe that should be some Sarah Friar (00:14:57): changing into a consumer substrate that I cannot tell you what it is, but by the end of this year, we will unveil it. I have seen it. I've tried it. I am a hand talker. Right now, I'm sitting on my hands. Jason Calacanis (00:15:10): Did have a did have a paradigm shift? Speaker 6 (00:15:12): When when yeah. When you used it, was it like having an iPhone for the first time? Sarah Friar (00:15:16): It's very what Johnny and team are really good at is bringing humanity to devices. And I don't really know how to explain that well, but when you see it, you feel it. Jason Calacanis (00:15:28): It feels natural in some way? Sarah Friar (00:15:29): It feels very natural, but it feels very lovable. Really? And I can't really explain what that emotion is because Jason Calacanis (00:15:37): In so much some way in terms of because David Sacks (00:15:39): technology Not taking your Jason Calacanis (00:15:40): phone out and it's it's seamless is what I've heard from people who played with it. Sarah Friar (00:15:44): Technology is very can be very mechanistic, but we all know great design just makes everything fade away. Right? It's what at the time, you know, the simple is hard. Speaker 6 (00:15:56): Yeah. I I think this Sarah Friar (00:15:57): is a very Job said. Speaker 6 (00:15:58): This story, just going back to the earlier questions of putting on the CFO hat, help us understand the capital allocation model that you use. Because a lot of businesses over the last decade, two decades that have kind of been these outsized returners have found some unique way to deploy capital at a higher ROC than anyone else. Yeah. And then you end up plowing all your capital into that higher ROC bucket. Yeah. What is that for you guys, and how do you think about that that portfolio approach to having more of these kind of big returner shots, and is there an engine where that gets better over time? Sarah Friar (00:16:32): There has to be because in the end, the durable, high value companies created in this era, I don't think they're not going to be magical. They're going to look like the great companies of prior eras. They're going to create customer value. Starts with the customer and really helps the customer do something different, better, more revenue, more efficiency. Right? Thermo Fisher wants to be able to get patient screening done faster so they get FDA approval faster. That's really important. Like, if you have a form of cancer where you have weeks to live, the difference between a breakthrough in four weeks and two weeks can literally be life or death. They also have I'm going to misquote this but something like 30,000, 38,000 people in the field selling those amazing like, if you walk into any lab in the country, you'll just see Thermo Fisher plastered all over every device. Those people want to be more efficient going to work. Like, the the fastest takeoff of codecs within OpenAI right now is actually in our go to market team. Our devs are there, but like if you look at the pace of growth, kinda month over month, it's all in GTM. So they want more productivity out of their GTM team. And of course, they're doing things in areas like finance, which I get really excited about. So customer value first. From that, now you need to get to a great gross margin. So how do you get to a great gross margin? You're looking at, like, the cost of revenue. The main input is compute. The good news on compute is that there is a massive deflationary curve on cost. Right? From ChatGPT five to five four, I think the deprecation cost was something like 97 percent. It's like a Wow. Kind of an amazing curve. Actually, I'm slightly from four to five four, it was 97%. But that happened in like two years. That's kind of wowing. Right? David Sacks (00:18:21): That's Sarah Friar (00:18:22): incredible. Even our newest model, if you look at five five that we just released, we're trying to now translate that back to the customer. So we actually raised prices on five five two x. But if you look at what the cost of the customer is, they're probably still getting a break of about 20 to 30% cost reduction per token because it's just much more efficient per token. So there's a lot to do in that envelope. David Sacks (00:18:44): Yep. Sarah Friar (00:18:44): And and part of making an alloc a capital allocation decision is having to if you make it on today's cost profile, you actually might misprice Right. The outcomes. You have to lean in a little on the cost profile. And then as we think about, like, the builds, yeah, you are having to make like, really, my focus today on compute is what's the compute I can buy for 28 onwards? Like that Michigan data center in Celine, I don't think we will be getting compute out of it until probably end of twenty seven or early twenty eight. So that's where you're starting to make your bets. And in fact, where I feel most short of compute right now is starting to look at thirty, thirty one, thirty two. So you're having to create a business model. Now, the good news is each year goes by, we get more confidence in the build. We're seeing it massively outperform, and so that's giving us more and more confidence, and the market is coming towards us much more. Speaker 6 (00:19:40): So how are you making the compute need forecast multiple years out Yep. Accounting for all of the architectural and model advancements that are happening where, call it, value or utility per unit of power is going up. And help us understand how you kind of estimate that given that there's a lot of technology development going on that has a high variance to it. Sarah Friar (00:20:06): Yeah. Yeah. So we we do have to make multiple assumptions both on the compute itself. So we assume right now that compute actually on a per gigawatt is getting more expensive because power is getting more expensive, memory is getting more expensive, and so on. However, the the intelligence that we get on the other side out because of the deprecation on the chip side is is more than making up for that. So in terms of a per unit sold to a customer, it should actually get a lot less expensive Speaker 6 (00:20:34): improvement in that. So that's just Yeah. Sarah Friar (00:20:37): Exactly. That's just the chip itself. We don't try to overestimate on the model side because sometimes like five five is an incredibly good model on the efficiency side. But if you look at something like five four, the prior model, it was a really large pretrained model. It was very expensive. It was actually hard to serve. And sometimes we wanna do that really big pretrained moment David Friedberg (00:20:58): Yeah. Sarah Friar (00:20:58): And then we take multiple model turns to be able to kind of drive down on the cost side. I mean, in the in the near term, like in '26 and '27, I clearly build a model that's bottoms up. So I know what my products are, I have a sense of what the pricing will be, you know, p time you know, consumer, p times q, how many wows do I think I have? I can see what the shape of the line is. How many of them will subscribe? Advertising coming in is also still related to how many weekly actives, how many dailies, how many messages, and So so you can you can do actually a pretty good model job twenty six and twenty seven. That said, the shape of the line keeps taking us by surprise to the upside. When you get into the outer years, you're actually looking more at the compute you've bought and almost just doing an algorithm the other way that's saying, this amount of compute should equate somewhat to this amount of revenue. I don't know for certain exactly where it will all come from. Like, year ago, I built a model for investors that showed AgenTek revenue. And the story was, we're going have this thing, we're gonna be in the agenda gear, we're gonna hand it to a developer with natural language they're gonna be able to build, and we think they will pay upwards of maybe $2,000 a month for it, which is kinda laughable in hindsight, but nobody believed. They were like, I don't even know what she's talking about. There's no way that will happen. And $2,000 a month? Remember when people were losing their minds over chat gbt pro being at $200? Like, oh my god. No one will ever pay for that. Speaker 6 (00:22:30): Yeah. Right. Yeah. So why a 122,000,000,000? Does it take you to 2,031, 2,032? Like, how do you get the calculus on the capital needs as you do that modeling? David Friedberg (00:22:38): You may be even more specific. So the estimates I've seen is that to stand up one gigawatt of AI compute costs about $50,000,000,000 in cap land, power, shell, chips, everything, all in around 50,000,000,000. Do you have to front all of that money when you create a new data center? Or how much of it do you do? How much of it can you get debt for? Does a 100,000,000,000 raise only get you two gigawatts, or does it get you five? Like, what does it get you? Sarah Friar (00:23:08): It's it's a great question. So if you look at our compute strategy, and it's crazy how fast the world has changed. So just two years ago, we were literally one. We had one CSP we worked with, Microsoft Azure. We we sat on one chip, NVIDIA. We had one product, ChatGPT. One price point, $20 a month. So often use a Rubik's cube as kind of my metaphor, so we were like one cube in the bottom. Today, if you look at our strategy, it's been to go, first of all, multiple CSPs, because what CSPs do for us in effect is they shift CapEx into OpEx. So you pay as you get the revenue, so as you're actually utilizing the data centers. So in effect, we are writing somewhat on their ability to build kind of CapEx and financing. So today, sit on top of every CSP, Oracle, CoreWeave, Microsoft, GCP, AWS, and a bunch of small neoscalers. On the chip side, we've also gone for a program of being multi chip because we wanna make sure you're always on the frontier. I think if you're only on one chip, there's just inherently a moment where you can't be on the frontier because there's some leapfrogging that happens. So today, NVIDIA remains our absolute priority partner. They have the frontier chip. Our next big trading run-in the fall will be done on Vera Rubins. We're really excited about that, and now we're plotting kind of the Simon series that's coming. But we also now have chips in the pipeline from AMD. Cerebras is already online. It's been an incredible low latency chip, great for devs, for example, that want real time coding. And there's our own chip that we're working on with Broadcom. And then beyond that, there's other ways we've diversified. So now think about that Rubik cube. It's become much more multidimensional, and it allows us to effectively utilize investment grade CSPs in order to be able to go fast and push it back to be more OpEx, not CapEx. Sarah Friar (00:25:02): Now, we are starting to shift gears into more of a built to suit type environment. We announced a data center we're building with SoftBank Energy down in Texas. That's the beginning of something that's beyond a CSP. There's a little bit more CapEx required there. And then finally, I think, as the world progresses, remember, we've done all that just in two years. The The reason I like a Rubik's cube is, again, please chat GBT this, but I think a Rubik's cube has something like a quintillion different forms it can come up with. And so it just gives us a lot of optionality. So remember what I said, my job is maximum optionality, and in a moment where I'm not yet an investment grade type of entity where I can go get lower cost debt financing, being able to work with partners to do that is really important. David Sacks (00:25:48): Sir, do you think that in five years from now, the stack is just merged together? What do I mean? In traditional or historical markets, you'd have NVIDIA sell the chips, but that's all they do. And then you'd have, you know, Microsoft just run a cloud. That's all they would do. And then you would have a consumer app. That's all you would do. But now we see everybody doing everything. You know, you guys have silicon that you're spinning. You have models that you make. You may or may not eventually decide that you need to be some form of a neo cloud yourself. If you look at NVIDIA, they have incredible silicon, but they also have their own open source models. They're increasingly becoming an off taker. Google is a cloud company first, but they also have a chip. Now they have models. So it's all merging. Is if that continues to happen, does that make the competitive landscape simpler or easier? Sarah Friar (00:26:38): I mean, think where everyone is trying to make sure they reside is the layer that is closest to the customer, where usually you take the the largest portion of the profits of the ecosystem. Right? No one wants to find themselves David Sacks (00:26:52): abstracted. Away. Sarah Friar (00:26:54): Yeah. Absolutely. And so that's why today when I think about our positioning, it comes back to where I started. Why we want to be that AI intelligence layer, is because a year ago, people talked about the commoditization of the LLMs. And frankly, it's gone the opposite because as you start building an agentic layer, and we've all started to use this word harness, but the harness is what brings the context, the memory. Right? I have, in my codex, I have a whole ginormous memory file where it knows that I'm me. It knows I'm the CFO of OpenAI. It knows how I like to write things, how I like to say things. It knows what I'm interested in. It actually also knows that I'm a mom, teenagers. I mean, it just carries all this memory, and that makes the model more powerful for me. Now think about what happens when that memory in that context is brought into an actual enterprise environment. So now it's not just even about the data that resides there, but I always think about the the intuition of, like, back when I worked on Wall Street, right, there was all the data in the world that told you what a stock should do post an earnings call. But, give me one second, then you called your trader, and the trader be like, yeah, stock's not going up, Sarah. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, all the numbers say it did this, did this, this. And he's like, yeah, no. But I know this fund is under pressure, and they need to sell down their book, and that is gonna kill the stock for the next week. Right? That is the intuition of an enterprise. Like, it's the best example I always think of because I came out of a financing world, but there's this intuition in every walk of life. And that's where I think the models are now getting very connected to the memory and context and intuition of your company. And that's what gets CEOs and c suite really excited because they're like, okay, now I really see how this is gonna add value to drive my revenue line, my top line, but also, you know, I can think about it as an efficiency play as well. And so back to what you're asking, I think what people wanna make sure is they stay as close to that value as possible. David Sacks (00:29:00): And be flexible enough to pivot as you need to wrap. Yeah. But Sorry, Jason. Jason Calacanis (00:29:05): It's quite alright. Been wonderful and you've been so great with the details. One final detail question, rapid fire. Three great greatest consumer businesses of our lifetime, iPhone, Meta, advertising network, and Google's advertising network. Two of those three are ad based and even Apple has a sprinkling Haven't of ad heard you talk about ads much. People tell me they're seeing some ads in the experiment and the free version. What is your commitment to the ad version? You guys got a little trolled by Anthropic during the Super Bowl. Oh, you're going to have ads. But is ads the solution to making this free for the world? Sarah Friar (00:29:42): Yeah. So first of all, on the ad front, you know, we wanna stick by our principles. We wanna make sure that you know you're always getting the best result based on the model, not by something that was sponsored. So that has to hold true. And I think the second thing is that we'll always provide a free a tier, sorry, an ad free tier for people that just don't want ads. David Sacks (00:30:02): With that You're fed pay. Sarah Friar (00:30:04): If you took if you took Fiji says this really well. If, you know, Google and Meta had a baby, it would be ChatGPT. Because what you have in Google search, and by the way, we know we have at least 11% of the search market. It's a lot more because actually, when you do a Google search and the page refreshes, that counts as one. In ChatGPT, when you do a whole conversation where you might ask 50 questions, that also only counts as one. So in reality, we have a much higher portion, very high intent. That is great for advertisers because I'm effectively telling you what I'm doing. Right? I want really cool shoes to sit on the stage. I'm telling you what I want to go buy. In Meta's case, right, they use this, like, people like you sort of intent so they have the demographic. We have more than that because we have memory. Right? I just told you it knows who I am. So imagine putting memory and context next to intent, you should have a very potent ad platform, which gives you an ability to offer up massive access to the world writ large because now you can pay for it. And I think back to a question you asked, Friedberg, like, you look at the revenue per token right now, if I was optimizing only for today, I would give every token to the API. David Sacks (00:31:17): Right. Sarah Friar (00:31:18): Every token to the API. Order of magnitude more than to the consumer. However, I told you we're playing our own game. We have a strategy where we believe there's an AI infrastructure layer, a utility like electricity, and in a future state, you'll want to be able to serve the world writ large. Consumers, small businesses, large enterprises, governments. That's our strategy. David Sacks (00:31:39): Ladies and gentlemen, the CFO of OpenAI, Sarah Fryer. You've done fabulous.

本集资源与出处