Jun 12, 05:55 PM

OpenAI Hits $10 Billion Revenue with 500 Million ChatGPT Users, Seeks $40 Billion Fundraise Led by SoftBank for $90 Billion Stargate Project

OpenAI has reached an annualized revenue run rate of $10 billion, accounting for two-thirds of the $15 billion generated by AI startups in just 2.5 years. This revenue nearly doubled from $5.5 billion six months ago, driven by record global usage of ChatGPT, which now has 500 million weekly active users, excluding Microsoft licensing and one-time deals. OpenAI is planning an ambitious infrastructure project called Stargate, with projected spending of $90 billion on training and inference between 2025 and 2027. To support this, OpenAI is seeking to raise $40 billion in funding, with financing efforts led by SoftBank. Anthropic ranks second among AI startups with $3 billion in annualized revenue, sharing a significant portion with Amazon and Google for reselling its models. Fidji Simo, the incoming head of applications at OpenAI and former CEO of Instacart, envisions growing ChatGPT’s customer base to billions of users and emphasizes the positive societal impact of AI. OpenAI’s strategy focuses on expanding its younger user base globally and maintaining its lead in generative AI traffic, although Google's share is rising. Employees of OpenAI have cumulatively sold about $3 billion worth of shares into funding rounds since 2021.