It's ironic that Sam Altman's background is in YC, because this is the opposite of startup thinking. Instead of scrappy disruption he seems to want massive investment upfront with only vague ideas of what the technology could be used for.
That sounds exactly like venture-funded startup thinking to me.
With that said it's a gamble since somebody might come along with a $10MM model based on some new technique and then OpenAI's cost structure becomes a problem. Presumably their scientists could adapt pretty quickly though if that happened.