Sure, but there must be dozens of credible AI chip startups in various parts of their lifecycle started in the last decade. If the goal really was, as originally proposed, to solve the chip bottleneck for OpenAI you'd be better of backing one of those. And if literally all of these startups are on the wrong path and OpenAI beliefs a different kind of design philosophy would work better, I'm sure most if not all of those startups would be delighted to know about it, and quickly change their plans.
Starting from scratch would make sense if Altman personally were some kind of chip design savant with unique insight to the problem domain, and he definitely isn't that. Alternatively it makes sense if had nothing to do with saving OpenAI from the compute bottleneck, and was another one of Altman's Worldcoin-like grifter schemes.