OpenAI's Altman is still looking to spend after GPT-5 launch and is 'willing to run the loss'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Friday said the artificial intelligence company should prioritize growth and its investments in training and compute “for a long time,” even if it delays its path to profitability.

Last year, OpenAI was expecting about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue. OpenAI’s annual recurring revenue is now on track to pass $20 billion this year, but the company is still losing money.

“As long as we’re on this very distinct curve of the model getting better and better, I think the rational thing to do is to just be willing to run the loss for quite a while,” Altman told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in an interview Friday following the release of GPT-5.

GPT-5 is the company’s latest and most advanced large-scale AI model and was released on Thursday.

The model is available to everyone, including free users, and OpenAI said it’s smarter, faster and “a lot more useful,” particularly across domains like writing, coding and health care.