NEW YORK, Dec 10 (Reuters) - OpenAI's Chief Financial

Officer Sarah Friar played down on Tuesday public threats to the

ChatGPT maker from Elon Musk, one of President-elect Donald

Trump's closest advisors.

Friar, in response to questions from Reuters Editor-in-Chief

Alessandra Galloni during an interview at the Reuters NEXT

conference in New York, said about Musk's threats: "We trust

him...as a competitor, (he) will put first the national interest

and compete appropriately."

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, has publicly opposed OpenAI's

major corporate structure revamping to remove control of its

nonprofit board. He now runs xAI, an OpenAI competitor, and has

emerged as a close advisor in Trump's transition team.

Trump has chosen him, along with former Republican

presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, to head

a task force aimed at slashing government spending and

regulations.

Friar, who previously led social media firm Nextdoor and

joined OpenAI six months ago as its first CFO, said the company

has seen huge demand for its video generation tool Sora, which

was released earlier this week.

Account creation has been suspended since then, and Friar

didn't offer a specific timeline for when it would resume.

"Some of it is just we need capacity, but a lot of it is

also we want to be measured...it's only available to a very

small selection of people today, because we want to listen and

learn," said Friar, adding the company is taking a different

release approach for Sora from ChatGPT.

"There are places where we will go a little slower to make

sure that we are constantly moving safety first as well."

Besides video generation, she said she also anticipates more

AI agent products that can handle day-to-day tasks to be

released in the new year, with foundation models gaining better

reasoning capabilities.

"I think we are going to see a lot of motion next year

around agents, and I think people are going to be surprised at

how fast this technology comes at us," she said.

The fast-growing startup is also working on developing a new

dynamic with its largest investor and tech partner, Microsoft ( MSFT ).

"We think about it ... in terms of helping each other grow,

but also recognizing that diversification is a good thing as

well, in terms of growing the whole industry," Friar added.

Despite the controversy over its governance restructuring

and the recent exodus of executives, OpenAI continues to

experience rapid expansion, she said.

Friar said the company sees a "re-acceleration" in ChatGPT

user growth, which surged to 300 million weekly active users

from 200 million in August this year, attributing it to the

launch of new reasoning models such as o1.