OpenAI just hit $10 billion in annual revenue. In under 3 years.
That's faster than Facebook. Faster than Google.
And it the fastest-growing enterprise software business in history.
But the math is brutal.
They spent $9 billion to generate $4 billion in revenue last year.
They lost $5 billion.
Compute costs alone were $5 billion β more than their entire revenue.
Every free user is a loss.
But their numbers are growing fast:
500 million weekly users (5% of the planet)
3 million paying business customers (up 50% in 4 months)
90%+ of users still on the free tier
OpenAI has 80% of generative AI traffic (similarweb)
and they want to hit $125B in revenue in 2029 βΒ and break even.
That's a 13x from current revenues.
And it would make them bigger than Meta. Half the size of Google.
Let's say:
500M --> 2B users (similar to facebook)
90% users on free tier
3M--> 30M business users with $500/month
That's $228B.
Ambitious? Yes.
Impossible? No.
Drivers:
AI agents
Subscriptions
API revenue
New revenue streams (affiliate, advertising, etc.)
Right now, OpenAI is valued at 30Γ revenue ($300B valuation).
Compare that to:
Google: 6Γ revenue
Microsoft: 13Γ revenue
Even NVIDIA: 25Γ revenue
Investors are betting OpenAI will become the Amazon of AI.
What's your take?
