Key takeaways:
- OpenAI’s annualized revenue more than doubled to $3.4 billion from $1.6 billion in late 2023, according to The Information.
- Most of the revenue comes from consumer subscriptions and developer API fees.
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, saw annualized revenue more than double to $3.4 billion in six months, according to The Information.
Annualized revenue is the pace at which a business is generating sales, projected for the full year. It means that if OpenAI continues to book sales at the current pace, it is on track to record $3.4 billion in revenue for the year.
In late 2023, OpenAI saw annualized revenue of $1.6 billion. That was up from $1 billion last summer, according to the news outlet.
Most of this revenue comes from ChatGPT subscriptions, whether consumers are paying $20 a month for the premium service or developers are paying to access the APIs of OpenAI’s models. Around $200 million comes from Microsoft, which shares LLM revenue from Azure customers that use OpenAI’s models.
The Information said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman disclosed the revenue figure to staff. The growth pace shows that ChatGPT continues to take share in spite of competition becoming more intense.
However, whether OpenAI is actually making a profit – since it costs billions to do AI training and inferencing – was not disclosed.
OpenAI told The Information that the revenue figures were “inaccurate” without explaining further. The AI Innovator reached out to OpenAI for comment.
This Monday, OpenAI struck a deal with Apple to embed its generative AI models into iOS devices. Apple reportedly is not paying OpenAI, but rather giving it access to its global distribution channel. As for OpenAI’s strategic investor and partner, Microsoft, OpenAI said their alliance remains “unchanged,” with all pre-training of its AI models still occurring on Microsoft’s supercomputers.
