‘Of course’ OpenAI can pay $60 billion per year

Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk, one of the two people tapped last month to lead the software company, is confident that OpenAI will be able to cover the costs of the massive amount of cloud infrastructure services it consumes.

In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber at Oracle’s AI World conference on Monday, Magouyrk said “of course” OpenAI can pay $60 billion for a year’s worth of cloud resources. In July, OpenAI agreed to a five-year deal with Oracle that’s worth more than $300 billion.

“Just look at the rate at which they’ve grown to, you know, almost a billion users. That’s just unheard of,” said Magouyrk, who sat alongside fellow Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia for the interview in Las Vegas.

OpenAI said last week that its flagship ChatGPT chatbot, which was publicly launched less than three years ago, now has 800 million weekly active users. In 2024, OpenAI recorded a $5 billion net loss.

Sicilia said Oracle has started integrating OpenAI artificial intelligence models into a patient portal for viewing electronic health records. Oracle acquired EHR vendor Cerner for about $28 billion in 2022.

“I’ve seen the results, and I really do think that they’re going to have a dramatic impact on industries, on enterprises of all types,” Sicilia said of OpenAI.

OpenAI rents out Nvidia graphics chips to run models through Oracle, as well as CoreWeave, Google and Microsoft. At the same time, the company is designing a custom AI processor that Broadcom will build. Earlier on Monday, Broadcom and OpenAI said they will jointly deploy 10 gigawatts worth of the new OpenAI chips.

Building out that much infrastructure requires a hefty amount of new energy.

“I think it’s a factor of time, not a factor of if we’ll have enough power,” Sicilia said.

Oracle shares rose 5% on Monday. The stock has gained 84% this year, lifting Oracle’s market cap close to $900 billion.

WATCH: Oracle CEO Magouyrk: ‘Of course’ OpenAI can pay $60 billion per year