American AI research and deployment company OpenAI has disputed that it is seeking U.S. government loan guarantees to support a major infrastructure expansion, including new data centers and AI chip investments.
- •The controversy begun after the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Sarah Friar, during an interview with the Wall Street Journal, said the government can "backstop" OpenAI's investments, triggering a debate over whether the company was going to seek out taxpayer-funded guarantees as it racks up debt and investment commitments.
- •She later retracted the comment in a LinkedIn post, saying that OpenAI was not seeking government guarantees, but that the government needs to play its part to contribute to the sector's growth.
- •In total, the company has committed to buying chips and data centre infrastructure worth a combined US$1.4 trillion.
“The backstop, the guarantee, that allows the financing to happen, that can really drop the cost of the financing but also increase the loan-to-value, so the amount of debt that you can take on top of an equity portion,” Friar had said in her initial comments.
Open AI founder and CEO Sam Altman later further clarified that the company does not "have or want" any such guarantees.
The controversy highlights the rapidly increasing capital requirements of the AI industry, as companies race to secure computing power and chip supply amid intensifying competition. Building and maintaining advanced data infrastructure has become a key constraint in the deployment of large-scale AI systems, prompting both private firms and governments to explore new financing models.
According to recent global data, the United States leads the world with more than about 5200 data centers, followed by Germany (521), the United Kingdom (514), China (449), and France (315). The figures highlight the U.S.’s dominant position in cloud and compute capacity, an essential foundation for training and deploying AI models at scale.
"What we do think might make sense is governments building (and owning) their own AI infrastructure, but then the upside of that should flow to the government as well," Altman said.
OpenAI’s approach signals a broader shift in how artificial intelligence is financed and developed. With AI infrastructure now viewed as strategically important, partnerships between the private sector and governments are likely to become more common. Loan guarantees could provide stability for long-term investments in energy-intensive computing facilities, chip manufacturing, and related supply chains.
While the company has not disclosed the total value of the planned expansion, the initiative aligns with wider efforts by U.S. technology firms to strengthen domestic capacity in semiconductors and advanced computing.
