Sam Altman warns A.I. could be in a bubble, drawing comparisons to the dot-com era. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
After OpenAI’s much-hyped launch of GPT-5 fell short of expectations, CEO Sam Altman suggested the A.I. market may be nearing saturation. “Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about A.I.? My opinion is yes,” Altman told reporters over dinner at a San Francisco event last week.
So far this year, OpenAI has raised nearly $40 billion from backers including SoftBank, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. The company is now valued at $300 billion—a figure that could climb even higher as it looks to sell more employee shares.
Because OpenAI is still privately held, investors eager to get in may need to turn to special purpose vehicles, which some firms are already setting up. The company itself has cautioned against unauthorized deals, writing on its website: “OpenAI equity cannot be directly or indirectly transferred unless the seller first obtains OpenAI’s written consent.” That warning also applies to tokenized versions of equity, including the “OpenAI tokens” listed on Robinhood earlier this summer, which Altman has said are not connected to the company.
Even as Altman warned that A.I. could be in a bubble reminiscent of the dot-com era, he outlined massive spending plans. “You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on data center construction in the not very distant future,” he said.
Altman has previously said he won’t take OpenAI public, but the company’s recent shift into a partial public benefit corporation leaves the door open. A public offering will happen only “if and when we want to,” CFO Sarah Friar said at a speaking event earlier this year. Investor interest is driven largely by OpenAI’s role in advancing artificial general intelligence (AGI) and in building A.I. systems designed to reshape industries at scale.
OpenAI’s valuation trajectory
Earlier this month, Altman disclosed that OpenAI is on track to hit $20 billion in annualized recurring revenue, though the company has yet to turn a profit. “As long as we’re on this very distinct curve of the model getting better and better, I think the rational thing to do is to just be willing to run the loss for quite a while,” he said following the release of GPT-5.
Over nine years and 10 funding rounds, OpenAI has grown from a fledgling startup into one of the world’s most valuable private companies. Its valuation milestones include:
- $29 billion in 2023, doubling from its 2021 figure
- $157 billion in late 2024
- $300 billion post-money valuation in 2025
Meanwhile, the broader A.I. industry is accelerating. Meta recently signed a $10 billion contract with Google and partnered with Midjourney to bolster platform features and handle data storage demands. In China, DeepSeek launched its latest model, V3.1, which outperformed Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 on benchmarks while costing 68 times less. (Altman, however, has argued that generative A.I. models may no longer be improving—and could even be declining in quality.) Anthropic itself continues to expand its enterprise products and attract capital, reportedly pursuing a $170 billion valuation in a $5 billion funding round. Like OpenAI, it has no interest in using special-purpose vehicles to broaden access to its equity.
Despite concerns about bubbles and hype, many see lasting momentum. “While Altman amplified the bubble narrative, what’s really happening is a massive infrastructure buildout that signals long-term commitment, not short-term froth,” Jason Hardy, chief technology officer at Hitachi Vantara, told Observer. “AGI remains undefined and uncertain, but whoever achieves it first will shift the very foundation of technology. We’re on the verge of agentic A.I. becoming practical and valuable, and the next two years will showcase its global benefits.”
Hardy acknowledged that market corrections are inevitable as weaker players fall away—but said a collapse on the scale of the dot-com bust is unlikely.
