Sam Altman and Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Bets Mark 'Absurdist Capitalism', Says Tech Insider

Many tech industry observers were perplexed by a story this week that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is looking to raise up to $7 trillion in funding. The amount far exceeds the market capitalization of any corporation, including Microsoft, which recently reached $3.1 trillion and surpassed Apple as America's most valuable company.

Sam Altman Seeks Trillions for AI Chip Production Boost Amid Global Semiconductor Shortage

Microsoft has benefited from the surge in artificial intelligence spearheaded by ChatGPT developer OpenAI, in whom it is the largest investor. However, as AI becomes more integrated into how we work and play in the next years, Altman anticipates a problem: a lack of AI chips and chipmaking facilities.

With that in mind, he is looking to attract significant sums of money from wealthy investors all across the world for a project that would increase AI chip production. According to anonymous sources, Altman wants $5 trillion to $7 trillion for the project, which would involve OpenAI, investors, chipmakers, and power suppliers working together to develop chip foundries.

According to The Walk Street Journal, the amount dwarfs the current scale of the global semiconductor sector.

Sam Lessin, a Silicon Valley investor and early Facebook executive—he's seeking a seat on the Harvard Board of Overseers, an attempt supported by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a former classmate—wrote about the fundraiser in an Xpost on Friday titled "The Era of Absurdist Capitalism."

When trillions of dollars are sought in a fundraiser, Lessin remarked, "You have to question what has happened to society/our system."

He mentioned Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, saying, "I don't grudge Sam's showmanship in and of itself—he is just extending the game Elon has played with 'self-driving cars around the corner' or 'Mars by 2024.'"

Sam Altman's Trillion-Dollar Fundraiser and Elon Musk's Mars Mission: A Tale of Tech Titans' Ambitions

In 2020, Musk stated that SpaceX's first crewed Mars mission might launch as early as 2024. Two years later, he pushed it back to 2029.

“Sam is just playing a game of one-upmanship,” Lessin wrote. “Starting with fear-mongering AGI, and when that runs out…let’s come up with the biggest number we can think of.”

AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, which is a potential sort of AI capable of performing every task that a human can. Altman spent much of last year warning world leaders and others about the dangers of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which boosted interest in OpenAI products. On Thursday, The Financial Times announced that OpenAI's annualized revenues had topped $2 billion.

Lessin said that capitalism, rather than being the invisible hand that guides us, "becomes a game of 'absurdities' vs. discipline."

Photo: The Economist and TED/YouTube Screenshot