OpenAI has reached $10 billion (£7.4bn) in annual recurring revenues, the company said, nearly doubling its roughly $5.5bn in revenues for all of last year.
The figure includes sales from its consumer and business products and its application programming interface (API), and excludes licensing revenue from minority owner Microsoft and large one-time deals, OpenAI said.
The figures illustrate the strong growth in AI demand and position OpenAI to reach a revenue target of $12.7bn for 2025 that the company had previously shared with investors.
Revenue growth
OpenAI’s revenue growth is all the more remarkable in that its ChatGPT chatbot was only launched publicly in November 2022, kicking off a wave of interest around the technology.
The privately held start-up is burning large amounts of cash to bring in revenue, and lost about $5bn.
OpenAI is targeting some $125bn in revenue by 2029, according to multiple media reports citing the firm’s internal plans.
For comparison, Anthropic recently reached about $3bn in annualised revenues, fuelled by demand from developer-oriented code-generation start-ups using its tools, according to a Reuters report.
The figures give perspective to OpenAI’s huge valuation as venture capital firms rush to sink money into the chatbot maker.
Elevated expectations
It closed a $40bn funding round in March that was the largest private technology deal on record, at a $300bn valuation.
The firm is roughly valued at 30 times its revenue, highlighting the immense expectations its investors have for revenue growth.
Aside from Microsoft, OpenAI’s backers include SoftBank, Coatue, Altimeter and Thrive Capital.
Competition remains intense from large companies such as Google and Facebook parent Meta Platforms as well as well-funded start-ups such as Anthropic and xAI.