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OpenAI’s Altman Urges US to Support AI Investment After DeepSeek

Christine Tan, portfolio manager at SLGI Asset Management, breaks down the recent tech earnings from Meta and Microsoft.

(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman briefed US policymakers on the need to continue investing heavily in physical infrastructure to support future artificial intelligence development, days after the frenzy around Chinese upstart DeepSeek cast new doubt on AI spending. 

In a closed-door gathering in Washington on Thursday attended by officials from Congress and the White House, Altman said the rise of DeepSeek shows “it’s a really good thing” to push ahead with the $100 billion joint infrastructure venture between OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. Altman said the project, announced last week by President Donald Trump and called Stargate, is currently soliciting bids for future sites.

OpenAI executives spent months pitching the Biden administration on the need to support a massive domestic AI data center buildout. They’re now tailoring their message for Trump with a focus on domestic economic growth opportunities and concerns about China. 

That pitch has only gained new resonance in recent days after DeepSeek released a new model that rivals the performance of services from OpenAI and other leading American developers, suggesting China may be catching up to the US. But OpenAI’s messaging about the need for intense investment has also been complicated by DeepSeek’s claims that it built the service for a small fraction of the cost. 

At the gathering on Thursday, Altman and his team teased new advances in OpenAI’s products and said AI developers are moving toward services that can “do increasingly complex tasks for you.” But as tech companies build more sophisticated products, he said, “we’ll need much more compute,” both to improve the AI models and support growing usage.

“There is a very real competition in the world, and we’re very excited about the next step here,” he said. 

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