OpenAI’s Compute Chief: We Can’t Build Fast Enough | Sachin Katti
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Why does OpenAI consider its AI compute build‑out the largest infrastructure project in history?
Anytime we have thought we have enough compute, we can slow down, always negatively surprises like, oh, we should not have slowed down. Demand far outstrips compute supply today. So anything we can bring online, we consume immediately. Our biggest worry is that still, at the scale at which we are trying to get compute and build compute, the physical world does not move that fast. We do believe that the world of recursion is not that far, where AI will design the systems it needs to train and run the next generation of AI, including this.
Hi, I'm Matt Turk. Welcome to the Matt Podcast. My guest today is Sachin Kalti, who holds what might be the most fascinating and relevant title in tech right now, Head of Industrial Compute at OpenAI. Sachin has an incredible background. He was a professor at Stanford, a multi-time founder, and most recently the CTO at Intel. Now he's leading what many are calling the largest infrastructure build-out in human history. In this episode, we step away from the model layer and dive deep into compute and the physical reality of the AI boom. We talk about the staggering scale of the data centers being built. We get into the weeds on liquid-cooled supercomputers, power grid constraints, the potential of nuclear energy, and OpenAI's move into custom silicon with jalapeno.
We also discuss the broader Stargate strategy and the slightly sci-fi reality that AI is now beginning to help design its own chips. It is a fantastic look behind the curtain at what it actually takes to power the future of intelligence. Please enjoy my conversation with Sachin Kati. All right, Sachin, welcome. Excited to do this. We are recording this on the sidelines of the RAISE conference in Paris. So thank you for braving the heat. It's another heat wave here.
Thank you. Great to be here.
To start, some people describe what's currently happening in the world of compute data centers as the largest infrastructure build-out in history, bigger than the highway, bigger than the railroads. I'm curious, one, if you agree, and two, what it feels like from the inside. How do you view what you're currently building at OpenAI?
It
definitely feels like one of the largest
things humanity has ever built, effectively. Definitely bigger than many of the things that I've heard of. I'm not old enough to have experienced the highway build-out. But, no, it feels exactly like what
it
sounds. It sounds in the belly of the beast, so to speak. Every day is... We are making decisions. We compute that. Historically, from my previous role, for example, at Intel, we probably take months to make, given the magnitude of those decisions. But the demand is so insatiable and it is growing so rapidly that we have to move very quickly. So it's an intense time, but it's probably the most exciting thing an engineer would want to be part of.
Yeah. And I read somewhere that OpenAI was planning on spending about 50 billion in compute this year. Is that still the rough number directionally? To me, that sounds about right. Yeah. And the whole industry itself was going to be 700 billion in compute spend this year as well. So like insane numbers, it seems.
Yeah, and it's probably continuing to grow, right? And a lot of build happening. So a lot of that is also going to translate to compute usage from people like us in a year or
two. Is the right way to think about this that for OpenAI, it's a bit of a new world, right? So obviously not quite a pivot because obviously the all AI research is going full speed ahead, but like building... a whole new business within the company. Is that fair? Is that how people think about it? Because obviously building models is one thing, building data centers, it's a whole different world.
Yeah, I mean, I think OpenAI has always had a fundamental belief that computers are the foundation of everything, right? Computers are the foundation for intelligence. And the way we keep continuing to scale intelligence and distribute intelligence is by having compute. And so that has never been different. That has never always been the belief.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why does OpenAI consider its AI compute build‑out the largest infrastructure project in history?
0:00–6:56
2
How is OpenAI actively constructing its own data‑center farms instead of relying on partners?
6:56–14:41
3
What role does liquid‑cooling play in powering AI supercomputers and how is it engineered?
14:41–21:28
4
How is the power grid being upgraded – and why is nuclear energy a key focus for AI data centers?
21:28–27:28
5
What is the custom “Jalapeño” inference chip and how does it maximize tokens per watt?
27:28–34:12
6
Why did OpenAI develop the MRC networking protocol and how does it keep massive GPU clusters reliable?
34:12–40:52
7
How does OpenAI’s “Stargate” strategy combine partner compute, in‑house chips, and new data‑center builds?
40:52–43:56
Speakers
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