How OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar Is Keeping Startup Flush With Cash
Friar once made Jack Dorsey’s Square presentable to investors. Now she’s helping Sam Altman with a gargantuan $6.5 billion fundraising effort for OpenAI to help with its seemingly unquenchable need for capital.
At Square, Sarah Friar was the grownup who helped bring the fintech’s otherworldly CEO, Jack Dorsey, down to earth for investors. Now she has a shot at doing something similar for Sam Altman’s OpenAI—if she can last long term at the chaotic artificial intelligence startup.
Since arriving at OpenAI as chief financial officer in June, Friar has polished a management presentation for investors to make it “dead simple” compared to earlier fundraising pitches from the company, according to one person who saw it. The pitch hinges largely on mouthwatering comparisons that show OpenAI is one of tech’s fastest-growing consumer products, with the fastest revenue growth in tech history, comparable only to the likes of Google and Facebook, another person said.
OpenAI is forecasting revenues that would nearly triple to $11.6 billion next year and then double again to $25.6 billion, according to the person who saw the presentation. To get there, the startup has been burning hundreds of millions of dollars a month.