The Information : OpenAI Hits $12 Billion in Annualized Revenue, Breaks 700 Million ChatGPT Weekly Active Users
The Takeaway
• OpenAI appears likely to meet or pass its $12.7 billion revenue projection for 2025
• Fast growth prompted OpenAI to raise its cash burn projection $1 billion
• The company is nearing the close of $7.5 billion of new funding from Sequoia, Tiger and others
OpenAI roughly doubled its revenue in the first seven months of the year, reaching $12 billion in annualized revenue, according to a person who spoke to OpenAI executives. That figure implies the ChatGPT maker is generating $1 billion a month, compared to about $500 million a month at the start of the year.
The growth comes as the company logs roughly 700 million weekly active users for its ChatGPT products used by both consumers and business customers, up from 500 million weekly active users OpenAI said all of its products had in late March.
The revenue progress suggests the company could beat its projection of $12.7 billion in revenue for the year, up from around $4 billion in 2024, as more enterprises and individuals subscribe to its chatbot for coding and other tasks.
The fast growth is coming at a cost. OpenAI has increased its cash burn projection to roughly $8 billion in 2025, up $1 billion from the cash burn it projected earlier in the year, according to the same person. That suggests it could raise its earlier projection of $14 billion in spending on renting servers to power its technology in 2025.
The booming growth, which rivals such as Anthropic are also experiencing, appears to be helping OpenAI finalize commitments to an unprecedented $40 billion in funding, at a pre-money valuation of $260 billion, five months ahead of the schedule set by lead investor SoftBank in April.
After receiving $10 billion in funding in June, OpenAI has been lining up investors for the second, $30 billion portion of its funding round. Investors besides SoftBank are close to finalizing $7.5 billion in commitments to that second portion.
Most of these backers have committed at least $500 million each to that installment. Existing shareholders Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management are each committing hundreds of millions of dollars in the round, according to the same person. Other firms such as Dragoneer and Founders Fund have also committed to the second portion of the round.
The Japanese conglomerate has committed to funding the other $22.5 billion of that $30 billion installment by year-end as long as OpenAI reorganizes its corporate structure this year or early next year so that OpenAI’s for-profit arm would eventually be able to go public. (OpenAI and Microsoft, its largest outside shareholder, are negotiating the terms of that restructuring.)
OpenAI has said that it plans to use its money to rent more chips to expand and run its AI models. The company and SoftBank have also committed to invest $18 billion each in a data center joint venture. The two companies have discussed locations for data centers in Ohio and Nevada, among other states.
Tens of millions of people and businesses subscribe to ChatGPT, and OpenAI wants to make the app a gateway through which consumers and enterprises use online services or get work done.
In a push to get more enterprises to buy ChatGPT subscriptions, OpenAI is selling a customized version of its ChatGPT Deep Research feature, which produces full-fledged reports, and has offered 10% to 20% discounts on its ChatGPT for Enterprises product when customers buy tools like these. This month, it also released features for ChatGPT subscribers to create and edit spreadsheets and presentations, which could heighten its competition with Microsoft and Google.
OpenAI’s archrival Anthropic, whose annualized revenue recently hit $4 billion, up almost four times from the start of the year, is in talks to raise a new round of funding that would value it at $170 billion, triple its valuation from a funding round earlier this year.
Anthropic previously told investors it will burn $3 billion this year after burning $5.6 billion last year, and it projected rapid growth to as high as $12 billion in revenue in 2026 on the strength of its market-leading AI for coding-related tasks.