According to Financial Times News, OpenAI is planning to spend about $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next decade while sitting on massive unfulfilled contracts including $375 billion with Microsoft. The company accounts for two-thirds of Oracle’s $630 billion in unfulfilled contracts and two-fifths of CoreWeave’s $36 billion backlog. OpenAI’s latest funding round implies a $500 billion market cap that would place it among the top twenty S&P 500 companies, with Reuters reporting potential IPO plans targeting a $1 trillion valuation. Despite this enormous financial scale and complexity, the company’s auditor remains undisclosed, leaving Wall Street professionals confused about who’s actually verifying these massive financial commitments.
The billion-dollar audit mystery
Here’s the thing: when you’re dealing with numbers this big, you’d expect crystal clear financial oversight. Most companies in OpenAI‘s weight class use one of the Big Four auditors—Deloitte, EY, KPMG, or PwC. But OpenAI? It’s playing things close to the vest. The company declined to comment directly, though someone close to the organization claims they have “an industry standard audit with one of the Big Four firms.” So why the secrecy?
The small San Francisco accounting firm clue
Digging into OpenAI’s non-profit filings reveals Fontanello, Duffield, & Otake—a small San Francisco accounting firm listed as the “paid preparer” on recent Form 990 returns. Their entire website is basically a single page, which feels… underwhelming for a company with trillion-dollar ambitions. The forms themselves are contradictory too—they say no independent accountant compiled the financial statements, but that an independent accountant did audit them. Basically, it’s a mess.
The Big Four conflict problem
Now, if OpenAI is using a Big Four firm, there are some pretty obvious conflict concerns. Microsoft uses Deloitte, Nvidia uses PwC, and Oracle uses EY. That arguably leaves KPMG as the least conflicted option. But the real issue? Several of these firms are actually selling OpenAI products to their own clients. PwC became OpenAI’s first resale partner and largest enterprise user, while EY and KPMG both sell products using Microsoft Azure OpenAI tools. Deloitte, meanwhile, has partnered with Anthropic instead. How can you objectively audit a company whose products you’re actively selling?
What this means for transparency
Look, OpenAI isn’t public yet, so technically they don’t have to disclose their auditor. But when you’re talking about $1.4 trillion in planned spending and partnerships with every major cloud provider—including their recent AWS partnership—the lack of transparency starts to feel concerning. Michael Burry even tweeted about it, which tells you something’s up. As this company moves toward a potential IPO, investors are going to want clearer answers about who’s watching the books. Because right now, it seems like nobody really knows.
