A recent letter from OpenAI reveals more details about how the company hopes the federal government can support the company’s ambitious plans to build data centers.
The letter — from OpenAI’s head of international affairs Chris Lehane and addressed to White House science and technology policy director Michael Kratsios — argued that the administration should consider expanding the advanced production investment credit (AMIC) beyond semiconductor manufacturing to cover power grid components, AI servers and AI data centers.
AMIC is 35% tax discount. which was included in the Biden administration’s chip law.
“Expanding AMIC coverage will lower the real cost of capital, de-risk early investment, and unlock private capital to help alleviate bottlenecks and accelerate AI creation in the US,” Lehane wrote.
OpenAI’s letter also called on the government to speed up the permitting and environmental review process for these projects and to build a strategic stockpile of raw materials — such as copper, aluminum and processed rare earth minerals — needed to build AI infrastructure.
Company first published his letter on Oct. 27, but didn’t get much press attention until this week, when comments from OpenAI executives sparked a broader debate about what the company wants from the Trump administration.
At a Wall Street Journal event on Wednesday, CFO Sarah Friar said the government should “hold back” on OpenAI’s infrastructure loans, though later posted on LinkedIn that he misspoke: “OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments. I used the word ‘backstop’ and it misses the point.”
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CEO Sam Altman also weighed in, writing that OpenAI “does not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI data centers.”
“We believe that governments should not pick winners or losers and that taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions or otherwise lose in the market,” he wrote, although he said the company had discussed the loan guarantees “as part of supporting the creation of U.S. semiconductor factories.”
In the same post, Altman wrote that the company expects to end 2025 “over $20 billion in annualized revenue and grow into the hundreds of billions by 2030,” and said OpenAI has made $1.4 trillion in capital commitments over the next eight years.
