✨ 🗽 How Washington might end up 'backstopping' OpenAI

When does a corporate subsidy become a national security imperative? OpenAI's CFO mused about a federal backstop, then retracted it. The public recoiled — but Washington's logic may yet shift

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:

Backsies on the “backstop!”

Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer, has attempted a high-difficulty bit of verbal gymnastics. In a Wall Street Journal interview on Wednesday, she mused about the artificial-intelligence firm’s voracious appetite for capital to fund its expanding empire of chips and data centers.

OpenAI, Friar said, was looking for “an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental” partners to help finance that buildout. Pressed on whether she meant a federal subsidy, Friar attempted to clarify: She meant a “backstop, the guarantee that allows the financing to happen.” When the WSJ reporter summarized this as “some federal backstop for chip investment,” she replied, without hesitation, “Exactly.”

“Backstop.”

Hoo-boy. That one word detonated across social media.