OpenAI forecast projected negative cash flow and major compute spending through 2030

OpenAI is staring at a very expensive decade. A Financial Times report says the company expects to burn through $278 billion in cash between 2026 and 2030 as it keeps pouring money into computing power and infrastructure.

That spending is the point, not a side effect. The company wants enough computing capacity to train and run its AI models, and the FT says it forecasts about $856 billion in total spending on computing power and infrastructure by the end of 2030. That would make it OpenAI’s biggest expense by far.

The revenue picture is growing just as fast. OpenAI expects annual revenue to rise from $36 billion this year to $350 billion in 2030, a tenfold jump. Over the full stretch to the end of the decade, the company anticipates cumulative revenue of $840 billion.

But the cash math still looks brutal. The FT said OpenAI sees negative free cash flow of $278 billion over the same five-year period, and also reported that the company is on track to run through the $122 billion it raised in March by 2028. That funding pressure helps explain why OpenAI has been talking with investors about a valuation around $1.2 trillion ahead of a possible listing.

The timing around public markets is awkward, too. OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO in June, but Sam Altman said on Saturday the company would not go public in 2026 because of AI safety concerns. For now, the company is still trying to raise the money before the servers eat the balance sheet alive.