OpenAI has just released its latest model, GPT-4.5. However, it’s currently limited to Pro subscribers who pay $200 a month. Its CEO, Sam Altman, said on X (formerly Twitter) that it had to stagger the model’s release because “…we’ve been growing a lot and are out of GPUs.” He then added, “We will add tens of thousands of GPUs next week and roll it out to the Plus tier then.” So, even if you’re only paying $20 a month to OpenAI, you won’t have to wait long to get access to its most advanced model.
GPT-4.5 is ready!good news: it is the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person to me. i have had several moments where i've sat back in my chair and been astonished at getting actually good advice from an AI.bad news: it is a giant, expensive model. we…February 27, 2025
Altman added in his post that hundreds of thousands more GPUs are coming soon. Shortages like these are what’s pushing OpenAI to develop its own AI silicon in partnership with Broadcom. But because it will take the company years before it can release its own chips, for now it must rely on Nvidia and other providers for its needs for now.
This shows how Nvidia is in a good position, with the chipmaker saying that its latest Blackwell GPUs are sold out until October this year. And with institutions and individuals planning massive data center expansions, Team Green will likely be on a roll for the next couple of years. For example, OpenAI and Microsoft are working on a massive AI supercomputer that would cost $100 billion, while Elon Musk wants to scale his Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, to over a million GPUs.
Other investors are also getting on the data center game, with one 3-GW facility getting the go-ahead from the South Korean government, and another team experimenting with storing data on the moon. However, all this expansion of AI infrastructure has got Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying that there will be an overbuilding of AI systems, even as AI models become more advanced and require more computing power.
OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 is a good example of this happening. Sam Altman says that “it is a giant, expensive model,” with GPT-4.5 costing $75 per million input tokens and $150 per million output tokens. By comparison, GPT-4o only costs $2.50 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. Despite its outrageous pricing, Altman says that it “isn’t a reasoning model and won’t crush benchmarks.” Still, he adds that “it’s a different kind of intelligence and there’s a magic to it I haven’t felt before.”
