A recent letter from OpenAI reveals more details about how the company is hoping the federal government can support its ambitious plans for data center construction. The letter, from OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane and addressed to the White House’s director of science and technology policy Michael Kratsios, argued that the government should consider expanding the Advanced Manufacturing Investment Credit beyond semiconductor fabrication to cover electrical grid components, AI servers, and AI data centers. The Advanced Manufacturing Investment Credit is a 35 percent tax credit that was included in the Biden administration’s Chips Act.
Lehane wrote that broadening coverage of the credit will lower the effective cost of capital, de-risk early investment, and unlock private capital to help alleviate bottlenecks and accelerate the AI build in the United States. OpenAI’s letter also called for the government to accelerate the permitting and environmental review process for these projects and to create a strategic reserve of raw materials, such as copper, aluminum, and processed rare earth minerals, needed to build AI infrastructure.
The company first published its letter on October 27, but it did not get much press attention until this week, when comments by OpenAI executives prompted broader discussion about what the company wants from the Trump administration. At a Wall Street Journal event on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said the government should backstop OpenAI’s infrastructure loans, though she later posted that she misspoke. She clarified that OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for its infrastructure commitments and that her use of the word backstop had muddied the point.
CEO Sam Altman also weighed in, writing that OpenAI does not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI data centers. He stated that the company believes governments should not pick winners and losers and that taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions or otherwise lose in the market. He did note, however, that the company had discussed loan guarantees as part of supporting the buildout of semiconductor fabrication plants in the United States.
In the same post, Altman wrote that the company expects to end 2025 above twenty billion dollars in annualized revenue run rate and grow to hundreds of billions by 2030. He also said OpenAI has made one point four trillion dollars in capital commitments for the next eight years.