OpenAI Revenue Jumps Past $20bn as Computing Power, Ads, New Products Drive Push Toward Sustainability

OpenAI’s annualized revenue has climbed past $20 billion in 2025, more than tripling from $6 billion a year earlier, as surging user demand, expanding computing capacity, and new monetization strategies begin to reshape the economics of the world’s most closely watched AI company.

In a blog post published on Sunday, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said revenue growth has closely mirrored OpenAI’s rapid build-out of computing infrastructure. The company’s total computing capacity rose to 1.9 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 from 0.6 GW in 2024, underscoring the immense energy and capital requirements involved in training and running large-scale AI models.

That expansion has been driven by relentless growth in usage. Friar said OpenAI’s weekly and daily active user figures continue to hit all-time highs, reflecting the deepening adoption of ChatGPT across consumers, developers, and enterprises. What began as a conversational chatbot has increasingly become a platform embedded into workflows ranging from software development and customer support to research, education, and content creation.

The revenue milestone, however, also highlights a central tension in the AI industry. While top-line growth is accelerating, costs remain enormous. OpenAI is widely known to be burning billions of dollars annually on compute, data centers, talent, and model development. That imbalance between revenue and expenditure has fueled debate about how long even the best-known AI firms can sustain their current pace without fundamentally changing how they make money.

Against that backdrop, OpenAI last week announced a plan to begin showing advertisements in ChatGPT to some users in the United States, a move that marks a clear shift toward more traditional internet monetization. The decision signals a recognition that subscriptions alone may not be sufficient to fund the scale of infrastructure required to support continued growth. Users have historically shown limited willingness to pay high monthly fees, even as engagement rises, forcing AI companies to explore additional revenue streams.

OpenAI’s experience mirrors a broader pattern across the sector. Investors have continued to pour tens of billions of dollars into AI companies, often with little near-term return on investment. OpenAI itself has raised unprecedented sums for a private company, backed by Microsoft and other major investors, despite still operating far from profitability. The bet underpinning these investments is that dominance, data advantages, and ecosystem lock-in will eventually deliver outsized returns, even if the path remains uncertain.

Friar said OpenAI is attempting to manage these risks by keeping its balance sheet relatively light. Rather than owning vast amounts of physical infrastructure, the company is leaning heavily on partnerships and flexible contracts across cloud providers and hardware suppliers. That approach allows OpenAI to scale quickly while avoiding the long-term burden of fixed assets in a fast-evolving technological landscape.

Strategically, the company is also broadening what it offers. Friar said OpenAI’s platform already spans text, images, voice, code, and APIs, serving developers as well as end users. The next phase will focus on AI agents and workflow automation—systems designed to operate continuously, retain context over time, and take actions across multiple tools.

This shift points toward a future where AI is less about one-off prompts and more about persistent digital workers embedded inside organizations.

Looking ahead to 2026, Friar said OpenAI will prioritize “practical adoption,” particularly in health, science, and enterprise settings. Those sectors are seen as critical proving grounds where AI could deliver measurable productivity gains, cost savings, and breakthroughs, strengthening the case for long-term investment.

There are also signs that OpenAI is preparing to extend beyond software alone. Axios reported on Monday that the company’s policy chief, Chris Lehane, said OpenAI is “on track” to unveil its first device in the second half of 2026. While details remain limited, the move suggests an ambition to shape how users interact with AI at the hardware level, potentially deepening engagement and opening new commercial opportunities.

Still, competition is intensifying. Tech giants such as Google and Meta are pouring profits from their legacy businesses into AI development, giving them a financial cushion OpenAI lacks. At the same time, enterprise customers are becoming more cost-conscious, weighing AI benefits against rising bills for compute and subscriptions.

Currently, OpenAI’s surge past $20 billion in annualized revenue offers fresh evidence that demand for generative AI remains strong. Yet it also reinforces the central question hanging over the industry: if scale, speed, and user growth can ultimately be converted into sustainable profits in a business defined by extraordinary costs.