OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar says she trusts Elon Musk to prioritise national interest

At the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar addressed Elon Musk’s recent criticisms of the company’s corporate restructuring, asserting confidence in his approach as a competitor. Friar also outlined OpenAI’s progress and plans, including the launch of new AI tools and its growing partnership with Microsoft.

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI but later stepped away, has criticised the company’s shift from a nonprofit board structure. Now heading xAI and serving as a close advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, Musk has emerged as a competitor.

“We trust him… as a competitor, (he) will put first the national interest and compete appropriately,” said Friar in an interview with Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni.

Musk’s growing political influence includes a role on Trump’s task force to slash government spending and regulations, alongside entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Friar highlighted the strong demand for OpenAI’s new video generation tool, Sora, which launched earlier this week. Account creation for the tool has been temporarily suspended due to high interest, with no set timeline for reopening.

“Some of it is just we need capacity, but a lot of it is also we want to be measured… it’s only available to a very small selection of people today because we want to listen and learn,” she explained. Friar emphasised a “safety first” approach to Sora’s release, contrasting it with the rollout of ChatGPT.

Looking ahead, Friar predicted a surge in AI agent tools that can handle everyday tasks and improvements in foundational models’ reasoning capabilities.

“I think we are going to see a lot of motion next year around agents, and I think people are going to be surprised at how fast this technology comes at us,” she noted.

Despite controversies over governance restructuring and the departure of key executives, OpenAI continues to grow rapidly. Friar revealed that ChatGPT has seen a “re-acceleration” in user growth, climbing from 200 million weekly active users in August to 300 million, driven by the launch of reasoning models like o1.

The company is also fostering a deeper relationship with Microsoft, its largest investor and tech partner.

“We think about it… in terms of helping each other grow, but also recognizing that diversification is a good thing as well, in terms of growing the whole industry,” Friar said.