OpenAI offers AI for chip design, touts cost advantage over open-source, CFO says

On September 7, OpenAI's CFO Sarah Friar told attendees at Goldman Sachs' Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco that the ChatGPT creator is targeting specialised industries like chip design, life sciences, and financial services with AI solutions. The company is also experimenting with outcome-based pricing to meet enterprise customers' demand for measurable returns on AI investments.

OpenAI aims to compete with Chinese open-weight models and rivals such as Anthropic by offering more cost-effective AI options for businesses. Earlier this year, OpenAI cut the price of its lower-cost Luna model by 80%, resulting in a roughly 10-fold increase in usage. Its coding tool Codex has attracted 25 million users. Enterprise revenue for OpenAI increased by 32% from June to July, compared to 20% growth in total annualised revenue during the period.

By mid-year, enterprise and consumer businesses had reached a roughly even split, ahead of OpenAI's goal of achieving that balance by year-end, according to Friar. OpenAI claims that deploying its lower-cost model could be cheaper than using Chinese open-source alternatives through cloud providers, as it is cheaper than Z.ai's GLM 5.3 when deployed on a cloud layer.