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

OpenAI is expanding its AI capabilities into specialized sectors like chip design, life sciences, and financial services, according to Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco, Friar emphasized that OpenAI is also experimenting with outcome-based pricing for businesses seeking measurable returns on AI investments.

This aggressive approach comes as OpenAI faces intense competition from Chinese open-weight models and rivals such as Anthropic, which cater to enterprise customers seeking specific AI solutions and clear ROI.

Friar shared that OpenAI successfully utilized its models to develop the Jalapeno chip, which was finalized and sent to production within nine months. In contrast, open-source and open-weight models are generally viewed as more cost-effective alternatives to OpenAI's and Anthropic's frontier models. Recently, OpenAI reduced the price of its Luna model by 80%, resulting in a tenfold increase in its usage. The company's Codex, an AI coding tool, has amassed 25 million users.

Enterprise revenue grew by 32% from June to July, matching the 20% annualized revenue growth seen during the same period. As of mid-year, enterprise and consumer businesses were in near balance, surpassing OpenAI's goal to achieve this equilibrium by the end of the year, according to Friar. She added that deploying OpenAI's lower-cost Luna model could prove more economical than using Chinese open-source alternatives on cloud platforms, such as Z.ai's GLM 5.3, despite potential differences in cloud pricing.