Asked by Stratechery about adding another supplier to ease the choke point where Nvidia and AMD source at TSMC, Altman said: “I would like TSMC to just build more capacity.”

Pressed on whether he meant multi-sourcing, he doubled down. “Do I see a need to get TSMC to expand their rate of investment in more capacity?”

Altman is not running a fab, but OpenAI is cooking up a custom AI chip that is rumoured to use TSMC’s 3nm, so he knows the supply chain well enough to make the call. His line does not slam the door on Chipzilla forever, it just signals a preference for a proven partner rather than a rushed dual-source gamble.

The US government’s chumminess with Chipzilla has the talking heads asking every silicon boss if Intel Foundry is ready to step in.

Nvidia, CEO, Jensen Huang, AMD, CEO, Lisa Su, and chip whisperer Jim Keller have fudged their answers, while Altman’s is plainer.

Chipzilla’s 18A process is the big audition piece, with promises of higher clocks at the same power, notably lower power at the same frequency and a decent density lift versus Intel 3. That still has to ship in volume and on time before anyone bets the farm.

Altman’s stance makes sense for buyers who need mountains of silicon now. TSMC needs time and logistics to scale US capacity, and any serious second source, whether Chipzilla or Samsung, must prove efficiency, performance and yields before the orders flood in.

For the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street, this sounds like business as usual. For engineers trying to feed AI clusters, it is the difference between standing up racks this quarter or explaining delays to grumpy customers.