OpenAI's CFO warned businesses that Chinese AI models pose cybersecurity risks

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar warned businesses Wednesday that adopting Chinese artificial intelligence models carries cybersecurity risks, urging companies to favor Western alternatives instead.

"The thing I would say to folks that are embracing, maybe, a Chinese model is also to think about the safety and security elements," Friar said, speaking to Bloomberg Television at the International AI Summit in Dublin. "We think you want to be on more Western models on the cyber front."

The comments echo concerns raised by rival Anthropic PBC. Guillaume Princen, Anthropic's head of international, told Bloomberg TV at the same summit that open-source models carry inherent risks. "We need to be really careful with open source on safety," Princen said. "I can't talk for open models. But by definition, there's more risk with them."

OpenAI and Anthropic have faced mounting pressure from Chinese AI developers, which have released open-weight models — those users can download and run on their own hardware — that are generally cheaper than top offerings from U.S. companies and competitive on many tasks, according to Bloomberg. Chinese releases account for the largest share of generative model downloads on the hosting platform Hugging Face, according to Bloomberg.

Friar said the competitive pressure from China means U.S. companies should not slow their AI releases too sharply. OpenAI has held back some models to meet internal safety standards, she said, but argued that excessive restraint risks creating an imbalance in who controls the most capable tools. "I do think that we need to pace it but not slow it down so much that we get this imbalance on who has access to the tools that potentially, from a cyber perspective, create real mission-critical issues in the world," she said, according to Bloomberg.

Friar also disclosed that OpenAI reached annualized revenue of "close to $50 billion" in the third quarter. OpenAI is expecting to reach or exceed $70 billion in annualized revenue by year-end, according to Bloomberg.

During the interview, Friar addressed the arrest of an OpenAI employee charged with using a hidden recording device in one of the company's offices, a development the company and the U.S. Justice Department disclosed Tuesday. "We are very focused on security, and I'm really grateful to our security team that helped bring that to some closure for us," she said, declining to elaborate, according to Bloomberg.

Friar said in September that the company would slow AI development if safety concerns required it, telling CNBC that business decisions would follow guidance from its researchers. Wednesday's comments represent a shift in emphasis, framing competitive pacing against China as itself a safety and security consideration.