OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently made two moves that say more about the company’s future than any product launch. On March 23, he stepped down as chairman of Helion Energy, the startup he has supported for more than a decade, as OpenAI explores a major energy deal with the company. A day later, OpenAI pulled the plug on its popular video production model, Sora, saying it would redeploy resources to its next major language model, called “Spud,” and a growing suite of coding agents and business tools.
Together, the decisions point to the CEO removing distractions, tightening control and preparing for the much-anticipated IPO. OpenAI has bolstered that transition by strengthening its financial leadership, including appointing former DocuSign CFO Cynthia Gaylor to oversee investor relations.
According to The Information, Altman also relinquished direct oversight of OpenAI’s safety and security teams to focus on “funds, supply chains, and data centers on an unprecedented scale.” The company consolidated its security team into a research organization led by chief research officer Mark Chen, while moving security under the “measurement” division run by co-founder and president Greg Brockman. At the same time, OpenAI renamed its product organization—led by Fidji Simo, CEO of applications—to “AGI Deployment.”
Altman also reportedly reduced reporting lines, reducing the number of executives reporting directly to him, marking another step toward operational clarity ahead of a potential IPO. Reuters first reported in October 2025 that OpenAI could file as early as the second half of 2026, targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion. In early talks, the company is floating at least $60 billion in cash offerings, depending on market conditions and revenue growth.
For much of the past year, Altman has described AI infrastructure in big terms, citing figures approaching $1 trillion to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). That rhetoric now gives us a more concrete alternative: nearly $600 billion in computing by 2030.
Sora, launched in December 2024, was one of OpenAI’s most compelling demonstrations of how advanced AI has become. But it also exposed a fundamental obstacle. Forbes estimates that producing a 10-second Sora video costs between $1 and $5 per computer, with higher costs for premium versions. On average, that would exceed $5 billion a year, or about $15 million a day.
OpenAI is now shifting resources to more profitable enterprise products, particularly coding agents. Internal communications and recent reporting from CNBC and Information suggest that the company is “aggressively looking” at business use cases, ChatGPT is changing from a general-purpose chat to a productivity layer—the frontline for software development, business operations and information automation.
As OpenAI relies on enterprise applications, it also faces another constraint: power. Training and running advanced AI models at scale requires large amounts of electricity, making energy a critical issue for the industry. Altman has long argued that solving AI at scale requires solving power at scale, and OpenAI’s interest in Helion reflects that fact.
His departure from Helion clears up a potential conflict as OpenAI explores partnerships with the fusion startup. Reports suggest the deal could give OpenAI access to as much as 12.5 percent of Helion’s projected output—about 5 gigawatts by 2030 and up to 50 gigawatts by 2035.
Helion has yet to begin producing commercial power but is moving quickly from prototype to grid-tied assembly plants. The company is currently building Orion, its first commercial facility in Washington state, with development to begin in July 2025 and the goal of delivering the first 50 megawatts to Microsoft by 2028. If that timeline holds, Orion could serve as a benchmark for multi-gigawatt fleets over the next decade.
Altman made his name on ambitious, systems-level thinking, often abstracting from the future of intelligence. Now, he works as a CEO preparing the company for the public markets, where ambition must be matched with discipline and vision must translate into returns. Altman must convince investors that OpenAI can turn unprecedented capital expenditures into sustainable returns while pursuing AGI’s long-term mission.
