• OpenAI's Sarah Friar said at a conference that the U.S. government could 'backstop' the financing for AI investments.
• Friar later clarified that the comments were intended for the entire AI sector, not just OpenAI.
• Still, social media interpreted those comments as OpenAI seeking federal backing for its AI investment, sparking a controversy. 

OpenAI may soon seek government funding to support its ambitious AI infrastructure plan, estimated to cost over $1 trillion. However, remarks from one of its top executives in a media interview have sparked widespread online backlash against the ChatGPT maker.

Speaking at a Wall Street Journal business event on Wednesday, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said the company is "looking for an ecosystem of banks [and] private equity" to support its investment in AI infrastructure. She said the U.S. government could "backstop the guarantee that allows the financing to happen."

The comments, which Friar later said were misinterpreted, sparked an uproar on social media, with some users questioning OpenAI's intentions and whether it was right for a private company to receive taxpayer money.

Julian Brigden, co-founder and President at research firm Macro Intelligence 2 Partners LLC, posted on X: "Why does #SamAltman #openapi need the taxpayer to guarantee their debt if they are going to make hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars?" 

"Has he just done a cash analysis and realised he's cash flow short?"

Friar Clears The Air

Around midnight Eastern Standard Time, Friar posted a clarification on LinkedIn, stating that her comments were intended for the AI industry, not OpenAI.

"OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments. I used the word 'backstop' and it muddied the point. As the full clip of my answer shows, I was making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity which requires the private sector and government playing their part," Friar wrote.

OpenAI Gets Backlash Anyway

Gordon Johnson, an analyst at GLJ Research and one of Tesla's harshest critics, said, "OpenAI is a nonprofit that now wants a federal backstop guarantee for all new CAPEX investments but also wants to IPO at $1Tn next year for its exclusive shareholders."

Johnson went so far as to compare the approaches of OpenAI and the newly elected mayor of New York City, the Democrat Zohran Mamdani. "So, if @ZohranKMamdani requests gov't handouts for poor people in NYC, its socialism/communism. Yet, if @OpenAI literally does the SAME THING to fund its massive/reckless investments in AI, which will kill millions of American jobs, it's NOT? #makeitmakesense" his other X post read.

"Let OpenAI fail if they can't survive by themselves," posted computer scientist Peter Voss, who is credited with jointly coining the term artificial general intelligence (AGI). "Other equally or likely more technically capable companies like DeepMind and xAI will easily fill the gap. No national security issue, just trying to bail out shareholders."

From political ranks, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis chimed in with his opposition. "No. Privatized profits and socialized losses," he said in an X post, he wants the government "not to bail out big technology companies." 

Ambitious AI Plan

OpenAI alone has committed to spending more than $1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure, even though the company remains unprofitable. In recent months, it has struck multi-billion dollar deals with Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, and Oracle for cloud capacity and chips. It is also eyeing a public listing, which could be one of the biggest IPOs ever.

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