OpenAI has achieved a significant financial milestone, announcing on June 9 that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) has reached $10 billion. This represents an 82% increase from the $5.5 billion reported in 2024, highlighting the company's extraordinary growth trajectory less than three years after launching ChatGPT.
The $10 billion figure encompasses revenue from OpenAI's consumer products, ChatGPT business offerings, and its application programming interface (API), but notably excludes licensing revenue from Microsoft and large one-time deals. The company currently serves over 500 million weekly active users and 3 million paying business customers.
This revenue achievement provides important context for OpenAI's record-breaking $40 billion funding round closed in March 2025, which valued the company at $300 billion and stands as the largest private tech deal in history. Led by SoftBank with a $30 billion commitment, the funding round included participation from Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive Capital.
However, OpenAI's meteoric rise comes with substantial costs. The company lost approximately $5 billion in 2024, primarily due to massive computing infrastructure expenses, including the costs of training and running its AI models. Despite these losses, OpenAI has ambitious projections, expecting to triple its revenue to $12.7 billion by the end of 2025.
The company's long-term financial outlook remains challenging. According to reports, OpenAI is targeting $125 billion in revenue by 2029 but doesn't expect to achieve positive cash flow until that year. This financial trajectory underscores the enormous capital requirements of developing cutting-edge AI technology and the pressure on OpenAI to rapidly increase revenue through its growing suite of products.
OpenAI's business growth has been fueled by significant expansion of its paid user base, which increased by 50% this spring alone, from two million in February to three million by the end of May 2025. This growth has been largely driven by enterprise products like ChatGPT Enterprise, Team, and Edu, launched in 2023.