By Anna Tong

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - ChatGPT maker OpenAI said on Tuesday private equity veteran Adebayo Ogunlesi, who is currently the CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), has joined its board. 

Ogunlesi, 71, will be advising OpenAI on securing access to the infrastructure necessary for advancing its artificial intelligence development, OpenAI said in a statement.

Founded in 2006, GIP is a PE firm specializing in infrastructure that manages more than $100 billion in assets and has a portfolio including Britain's Gatwick airport, the Port of Melbourne and major offshore wind projects. BlackRock purchased GIP last year for $12.5 billion.

AI infrastructure has been front-and-center in the AI race, as technology companies' ability to advance their AI is directly dependent on their ability to shore up enormous compute infrastructure, via specialized data centers that link thousands of chips together in clusters.

In 2025 alone, big tech firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Apple are projected to spend over $200 billion on capex – almost double of what they shelled out in 2021, the year before OpenAI's generative AI chatbot ChatGPT debuted.

In recent months, OpenAI has been pushing the U.S. government to adopt supportive regulation that will enable the U.S. to stay ahead of China in the race for the nascent technology.

"There's an estimated $175 billion sitting in global funds awaiting investment in AI projects, and if the U.S. doesn't attract those funds, they will flow to China-backed projects—strengthening the Chinese Communist Party's global influence," the company wrote on Monday in a set of policy proposals.

(Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco; Editing by Rashmi Aich)