OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar Clarifies Sam Altman’s ‘AI Bubble’ Remarks: ‘The AI Era Is Upon Us, And We’re Leading The Path’

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar on Wednesday clarified co-founder Sam Altman’s comments about there being an “AI bubble” in the industry, saying that he was likely referring to some investments not turning out to be the best ones.

In an interview with CNBC, Friar said that there have been multiple eras in the world of technology, from the internet to mobile. She said she believes that we’re in an AI era right now, and that OpenAI is leading the charge.

“We still feel that the AI era is upon us, and we’re leading the path,” she said, while brushing aside concerns about the hiccups that OpenAI faced after the launch of GPT-5. “As we’ve come out of the gate, we’re seeing, actually, acceleration in Plus and Pro subscriptions. That’s a good sign; people are seeing a lot of value. And we’re seeing a lot of momentum in the enterprise, great momentum with developers.”

Friar also said that OpenAI had seen a 50% week-on-week increase in token usage by developers post the launch of GPT-5, while that for agentic uses doubled.

The OpenAI CFO’s comments come after Altman warned that an AI bubble is forming. “When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,” Altman told reporters last week.

Strategists at UBS also echoed similar sentiments, stating that the artificial intelligence boom led by investments from private credit firms and lenders is increasing the risk of overheating in the sector.

The firm cautioned that private credit has grown beyond lending to small companies to tech giants–the technology sector’s debt from private lenders rose by nearly 29% or $100 billion in the last 12 months.

OpenAI is not listed publicly at the moment. OpenAI investor Microsoft’s shares were up 0.07% during Wednesday’s opening trade. Retail sentiment on Stocktwits around OpenAI was in the ‘bullish’ territory, while users felt ‘bearish’ about Microsoft.

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