Greg Brockman of OpenAI is driving a massive infrastructure boom, impacting more than just AI.

TL;DR

• OpenAI's Greg Brockman is driving massive AI infrastructure development, including the Stargate Project.
• Brockman secured a multiyear, multi-billion dollar deal with AMD for hundreds of thousands of chips.
• He is spearheading OpenAI's ambitious $1.4 trillion plan to build 30 gigawatts of compute power for AGI.
• Brockman's focus on infrastructure is crucial for OpenAI's mission to benefit all of humanity.

Su told Fortune that Brockman’s insistence on thinking big was essential to making the deal—which sent AMD’s stock soaring 24% the day it was announced.

“What I love the most about working with Greg is he’s just so clear in his vision that compute is the currency of intelligence, and his just maniacal focus on ensuring there’s enough compute in this world,” Su said. 

She remembered that the discussions with Brockman felt unlike any she'd experienced with other prospective collaborators throughout the years. She stated that collaborations of this nature typically progress through phases. “We start at the first stage of the partnership, and then we do something a little bigger, and then something a little bit bigger.”

Brockman, however, aimed for significant success or nothing at all. “I think Greg was like, ‘failure is not an option,’” she said. The infrastructure we're constructing operates on a scale vastly different from typical human construction. We're rapidly constructing gigawatts of computing power. The core question is, how can we defy the established laws of physics? 

While Sam Altman serves as OpenAI's globally recognized leader and spokesperson, it's Brockman, his enduring partner and fellow founder, who has emerged as the company's prominent operational force. He's the executive spearheading OpenAI's ambitious infrastructure expansion, a venture for which they've already pledged approximately $1.4 trillion to establish 30 gigawatts of compute power. This also positions Brockman as the primary contact for a significant financial risk, considering the company's reported annual revenue is approximately $13 billion. 

This extensive deal-making aims to achieve what Brockman refers to as “completing the mission”—the development of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which “benefits all of humanity.”. In a conversation with Fortune, Brockman explained Constructing AGI is viewed as a comprehensive engineering endeavor, encompassing the entire spectrum from model design to the underlying chips, servers, and data centers essential for model training and operation. 

“The fundamental bet is that AGI is possible, and if we are right about that, then it will really change everything,” he said. “In my mind, the real question is, do you believe in continued AI progress?”  Brockman is certainly a believer: “There’s no bend in the scaling laws,” he said of the idea that if you build bigger AI models, feed them As more data is fed to them and they're trained on larger clusters of AI-specific chips, their performance increases along predictable, smooth curves. “The thing that’s hard is execution.” 

A striking comeback

He played a key part in fulfilling OpenAI’s infrastructure objectives, which he described as encompassing the development and oversight of the hardware, data centers, software, and the practical operations needed to "provide intelligence at an unprecedented The "scale" signifies a significant comeback for a leader whose tenure at the firm was once in doubt. At the time of Altman's dismissal, he was removed from OpenAI's nonprofit board and subsequently embarked on a sabbatical lasting several months, commencing in August 2024. Reports from media organizations indicated that he and Altman had reached an agreement on the sabbatical due to persistent worries that his assertive management approach had fostered friction among staff. It remained uncertain whether he would return to OpenAI, and if so, what his position would entail. 

Nowadays, Brockman has become omnipresent. He's there, alongside President Trump in Tokyo. He's there, enjoying a meal at the White House. He's investing millions of his personal funds into Leading the Future, a $100 million PAC focused on opposing AI regulation through lobbying efforts. Reportedly, Brockman played a role behind the scenes in molding OpenAI's corporate structure into a Public Benefit Corporation, a change revealed last week that allows the company to secure additional funding. Reports indicate that OpenAI is preparing for an initial public offering that might value the company at as much as $1 trillion, potentially marking the largest IPO in history and a significant first for a former Charitable organization

This partial return places Brockman at the core of OpenAI's most significant transformation to date, as the company moves from simply creating AI models to developing the infrastructure for their operation and deployment, a process referred to as inference in the The realm of artificial intelligence. Brockman is spearheading the most extensive and costly infrastructure development in tech's history, acting as the unseen designer who transforms Altman’s ideas into tangible hardware, financial backing, and political influence.

“Greg is some of the secret sauce…behind actually bringing these [deals] together and making partners want to get to announcements,” said Peter Hoeschele, an OpenAI executive who, as the head of the Stargate team, Reports to Brockman.

However, the narrative of Brockman's comeback transcends a single executive's recovery; it centers on the question of who will steer the upcoming industrial transformation. Brockman has emerged as a significant influential figure in the AI era. At the intersection of AI, energy, and capital, OpenAI’s “builder-in-chief,” is instrumental in structuring agreements that will determine the development and distribution of global computing capabilities.

Completing the mission

OpenAI's mission statement describes AGI as an independent system capable of exceeding human performance in the majority of tasks that hold economic worth. At the company's recent Dev Day, Brockman described AGI as a “continuous process… an important milestone, but not the end.”

Whether it's a continuous process or not, achieving AGI necessitates the most extensive infrastructure development ever undertaken. “It really makes programs like the Apollo program almost small in comparison, which is a really wild statement,” Brockman recently told CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, adding that he believes there will be economic returns. “This is really going to be the underpinning of our future economy and is already showing the promise and benefit to people’s lives,” he said. 

However, this initiative has also drawn significant criticism. Developing the necessary infrastructure for AGI pursuit might eventually cost trillions, potentially altering power markets and straining the electrical grid's capacity. The escalating demand is already causing energy prices to climb and sparking political opposition, as vast data centers are becoming focal points during election seasons in the localities where they're being built. Additionally, critics are skeptical about whether demand will increase sufficiently to warrant the investment. 

The way the infrastructure build out is being financed introduces an extra layer of risk. As part of its arrangement with OpenAI, Nvidia has apparently talked about backing loans the startup would utilize to construct its own data centers, a step that might hold the chipmaker responsible for Billions owed if OpenAI fails to make payments. Concerns have also been voiced by analysts regarding the deal's cyclical structure, where OpenAI disburses cash to Nvidia for chips, and Nvidia, in return, acquires a non-controlling equity interest in OpenAI and guarantees its loans.

OpenAI's collaboration with AMD, though not a reciprocal arrangement, is mutually beneficial, granting OpenAI the possibility of acquiring as much as a 10% ownership in AMD. 

Brockman has admitted it's challenging to construct adequate computing infrastructure for what he terms the “avalanche of demand” for AI, and that innovative financial strategies will be required. However, experts express caution regarding the deep connections among the leading companies. “There’s a healthy part and an unhealthy part to the AI ecosystem,” Gil Luria, managing director at D.A. Davidson informed NBC in early October. “The unhealthy part has become marked by related-party transactions like the ones involving these companies,” he said, which can artificially prop up valuations.

If investors decide those ties are getting too close, Luria warned, “there will be some deflating activity.” In other words, investors might bail on companies such as Nvidia, Oracle, and CoreWeave, whose fates are Considered too closely associated with OpenAI. 

Brockman as builder

Brockman, who grew up on what he's described as a “hobby farm” in North Dakota, might appear to be an unexpected individual to find himself central to one of the most significant technological shifts of our time. He's always had a passion for construction; his personal LinkedIn biography states nothing more than: “I love to build.” 

The inclination to tackle intricate challenges began at a young age. Robert Nishihara, currently CEO of the software platform Anyscale, encountered Brockman for the first time as teenagers at the Canada/USA Math Camp, a rigorous five-week program for students who have a passion for mathematics and enjoy tackling complex problems. Day.” Even so, Nishihara stated, “Greg was clearly one of the smartest people there,” Years later, while Nishihara was visiting Harvard as a prospective student, Brockman, who was already enrolled, acted as a mentor, He was shown around campus and taken to a notoriously challenging freshman math class.

Brockman's tenure at Harvard was brief, leading him to transfer to MIT, after which he left university altogether in 2010. He then became Stripe’s fourth employee, joining Patrick and John Collison at the online payment startup, where he was the first CTO and developed the company's initial engineering infrastructure, frequently coding late into the night. Stripe emerged as a prominent company from tech incubator Y Combinator, and in 2015, Patrick Collison connected Brockman with Altman, who then served as president of Y Combinator. In that year, he joined forces with Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and others to establish OpenAI, where, as per a blog post, he was enthusiastic to have “something impactful to build once again.” 

Before Microsoft's initial $1 billion investment in OpenAI, Brockman functioned as the AI lab's CEO, with Altman still managing Y Combinator. Brockman's reputation for an intense work ethic was soon widely known. A former OpenAI engineer remembered a crucial point in 2020 when the company had to demonstrate its potential as a profitable enterprise. “Greg basically hacked together the first API one weekend, I think over Christmas,” the person said, referring to the launch of OpenAI’s first commercial product — an API, or application programming interface, which let Developers integrate OpenAI's language models into their proprietary applications and offerings.

The ex-engineer remembered that when OpenAI was much smaller, with roughly 200 employees, Brockman configured his Slack to alert him to every message sent by anyone within the organization. Every channel. “You could be in some random technical thread and Greg would chime in with some incredibly informed and knowledgeable idea,” he explained. That said, it was “effectively impossible” for anyone to match his pace on anything: “So when I was assigning people to work with Greg, I chose very carefully—because you weren’t going to be sleeping.” 

After those sprints, Brockman would disappear for a while. “He’d go super hard, then go off like a bear and hibernate for a few weeks, and then come back,” the colleague said.

While Brockman took on a less public-facing role at the company after Altman became CEO in 2019, to many inside the company, Brockman is both the engine and the metronome of OpenAI. “He’s the heartbeat of OpenAI—the one who sets the pace,” said another former researcher at the company. “He has incredibly high standards and expects results.”

That intensity can also make him impatient. “If something’s not moving fast enough, Greg will take it into his own hands and work around people if necessary,” said another former OpenAI employee. “He’s very much an ends-over-means kind of person.”

His management style occasionally led to disagreements with his team. Keach Hagey, in her 2025 book The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future, suggested that Greg Brockman’s management style at OpenAI drew internal complaints, and that one of two self-deleting documents, emailed by Ilya Sutskever to the OpenAI board before Sam Altman’s firing, laid out concerns about Brockman’s “alleged bullying.” The memo — dubbed the “Brockman memo” — has since become central to Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI. In an October 1 deposition before a U.S. Sutskever admitted to the district court that it existed, and the judge mandated its production during discovery.

In response to Sutskever’s allegations, an OpenAI spokesperson told Fortune that “These claims aren’t true. Ilya signed the petition asking for Greg and Sam to be reinstated, and the Board’s independent review further concluded that he and Sam are the right leaders for OpenAI.”

Brockman states his current priority is development, encompassing both software creation and overseeing OpenAI's infrastructure initiative, which he refers to as “really the theme of what I do,”, despite the evolving equilibrium between technical and The nature of strategic work has evolved throughout history.

Infrastructure from the get-go

Brockman consistently believed that infrastructure was fundamental to OpenAI's objectives from the outset. In 2017, he stated, the firm started reducing its hardware forecasts, which unexpectedly overshadowed its initial expectations. “We started to think, okay, maybe we’ll need $10 billion worth of hardware,” Brockman recalled. “At that point, you need data centers.” 

The physical infrastructure required today, encompassing the chips and the data centers that power them, operates at an immense scale, demanding energy measured in gigawatts. A gigawatt is equivalent to 1,000 megawatts, which is approximately the amount of power needed to serve 750,000 U.S. Residences. “There are very few people in the world who’ve ever thought about building a gigawatt-scale data center and what that requires,” said Hoeschele.

Stargate signifies OpenAI's transition from primarily utilizing leased cloud computing, predominantly from Microsoft, to investing in its own extensive infrastructure, evidenced by data center construction plans across various U.S. Locations. States like Texas, New Mexico, and, most recently, Michigan. The company is also growing its presence globally, with operations now extending to nations such as Norway and the UAE. 

Hoeschele remembered initial discussions regarding the company's commitment to such a bold financial undertaking. “Three years ago, I kept asking, ‘Okay, how much do you think we are really going to need?'” he said. Greg has consistently been the spokesperson, both privately and when necessary publicly, regarding the extensive computational resources needed for ongoing technology testing and deployment. We'll keep making these investments.

Despite concerns from critics regarding the environmental and economic impact of AI infrastructure, Brockman maintains that the enduring advantages will surpass the expenses. “At the end of the day, what this technology is for is to benefit people,” he said. I believe it's important to thoroughly examine the basics, ensuring we're analyzing the correct information. I've encountered numerous figures concerning data centers and their effects on local areas that are certainly not Precise. 

He did, however, mention that he's aware OpenAI has to demonstrate its worth to the communities it serves. Our primary objective is to demonstrate that having a data center in your vicinity is genuinely beneficial for your community and your life. We'll demonstrate that to people as time goes on. 

Brockman’s power influence

According to an OpenAI spokesperson, during his 2024 sabbatical Brockman was still in touch with the company and following its developments–which included closing a $6.6 billion funding round that valued the company at Approximately $157 billion. Upon Brockman's return in November 2024, he appeared re-energized. He stated in an internal memo that he'd been collaborating with Altman to establish a new position centered on “significant technical challenges.” Within weeks, this directive was given a title: a new division named Scaling, which Brockman Fortune “merged the deep learning engineering of both our research and applied teams.” He clarified that Scaling's role is to ensure we possess, and can fully utilize, the computational capacity required for training and Operate our models.”

He went on to say that this group handles all aspects, from training their frontier models to managing ChatGPT for its vast user base. This is the domain of some of the most difficult technical hurdles, as our ongoing advancements and the expansion of our current capabilities necessitate the continuous invention of novel methods for debugging, managing, and scaling computation. Systems that provide them with assistance.

Barely two months after, on the day following President Trump's inauguration, OpenAI revealed the Stargate Project. This collaborative initiative was announced at the White House, in conjunction with President Trump, Oracle, and SoftBank, representing a bold public endeavor. A private initiative plans to allocate as much as $500 billion across four years for constructing substantial data centers and related infrastructure within the U.S. To support AI development. By July, Brockman, recognized for his recruitment prowess, had lured four prominent engineers from competitors, including Spas Lazarov, who previously directed data center engineering at Apple, and David Lau, formerly a vice president At Tesla for software engineering; Uday Ruddarraju, who previously led infrastructure engineering at XAI and X; Mike Dalton, an infrastructure engineer also from XAI; and Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta. 

While Stargate highlighted the immense scope of OpenAI's aspirations, it also underscored that the company achieves this through the synergy between Altman's strategic direction and Brockman's practical implementation. “That’s the beauty of their partnership,” Hoeschele added. When OpenAI is performing optimally, Sam articulates our future direction, and Greg is
he's making it a reality, relying on his technical skills and connections. He's collaborating closely with individuals such as Lisa Su and Jensen Huang to finalize these agreements.

Brockman's blend of technical expertise and extensive deal-making capabilities has also positioned him as a growing force in politics. Over the past few months, he's invested millions of his personal funds into Leading the Future, a $100 million super PAC dedicated to promoting AI. This initiative is supported by Brockman, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and various other prominent figures in the tech industry, and it advocates for Those who support less regulation and quicker AI implementation.

Brockman was also among a high-powered group of tech executives who attended a White House dinner in September, where he praised Trump for his “optimism” in embracing AI and the massive infrastructure buildout required To back it. The subsequent month saw him back at the White House for a fundraising event intended to gather funds for a proposed $200 million ballroom expansion, although an OpenAI representative stressed that "he attended the October While he attended a dinner in a personal capacity, he hasn't contributed to the ballroom initiative. Nevertheless, many interpret these actions as a strategic move to reduce regulatory obstacles concerning the Stargate development spearheaded by OpenAI.

However, some individuals don't consider him entirely autonomous. My strong feeling, informed by close friends who spent years at OpenAI, is that Greg isn't entirely independent of Sam, even while he makes his own commitments and invests his money in areas that Sam might "not," stated a technology consultant based in Washington, D.C., who had prior experience working with Palantir and the federal government. “When it comes to OpenAI and the business, Greg is his own person, but he does not go sideways with Sam on company strategy—especially partnerships.”

We must continue to develop

Despite facing scrutiny and criticism from regulators, rivals, and local communities regarding its ambitions, Brockman remains steadfast in his belief in building. During a podcast appearance with Stripe cofounder Patrick Collison, Brockman posed a question to listeners, asking them to envision a single Stargate data center dedicated to contemplating one specific issue. “Imagine it just thinking about how to solve a Millennium Problem [one of seven well-known, unsolved complex mathematical problems] or how to cure a specific kind of cancer,” he said. “That level of computational power coupled with the ability to experiment and learn from your ideas, that is going to be something the world has never seen.” 

Regarding the recently unveiled, incredibly expensive spending pledges, he recently stated they would be self-funding. “If we had 10 [times] more compute [computing power], I don’t know if we’d have 10 [times] more revenue, but I don’t think we would be that far.”

While Altman continues to champion OpenAI, Brockman is independently advocating for increased computing capacity throughout the AI sector. “If the market does wake up to the demand that we’re really very loudly trying to say is coming, not just from us but from the whole industry, then great,” he said during OpenAI’s recent Dev Day. “I would love not to have to go and figure out how to build energy ourselves, but we’re here to do the mission.” 

Despite warnings from skeptics that OpenAI’s ambitious expansion might prove to be a testament to overreach instead of innovation, he remains undeterred in his mission. Seven years prior, he mentioned to Fortune that the aspect of OpenAI’s mission involving the construction of massive data centers would have remained merely a concept. These massive facilities are currently being constructed on former ranchland in Abilene, Texas, and are also taking shape within the derelict shell of an auto assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, with additional sites already revealed in New Mexico. Wisconsin and Michigan. Regardless of whether those immense projects are eventually seen as triumphs or mistakes, Brockman's influence will be evident in the extensive wiring and equipment, the engineering drive, and the unwavering conviction that their construction was justified. In any way.