Record growth in OpenAI | FinanceAffairs.com

OpenAI has surpassed $2 billion in annual revenue, driven by the success of its pioneering AI model ChatGPT, making the company one of the fastest-growing technology companies in history, the Financial Times reported.

The San Francisco-based company in December achieved an annual run rate — based on the previous month's revenue multiplied by 12 — of more than $2 billion, and that number is only expected to rise in the coming days due to strong interest from entrepreneurs. Client.

He owns 92% of the Fortune 500

This extraordinary growth is expected to place OpenAI, which was founded as a non-profit in 2015, among a handful of Silicon Valley companies — including Google and Meta — that have posted revenues of more than $1 billion within a decade of the company's founding.

Although OpenAI is off to a good start, it's not a given that the company will always stay ahead of the curve. Because both Google and Meta are getting crushed by Groupon.com when it comes to skyrocketing growth. It took just two years to get over $1 billion in revenue, but after the company went public in November 2011, it fell nearly 97 percent on the Nasdaq.

According to industry magazine The Information, OpenAI's ongoing annual revenue reached $1.3 billion in October, but sales growth has continued to accelerate despite the turmoil that occurred when CEO Sam Altman was fired last fall, before being reinstated just days later following protests. big.

According to Altman, 92% of Fortune 500 companies were using OpenAI products, including ChatGPT and its AI model GPT-4, as of November last year, while the chatbot has 100 million weekly users.

Big expenses

According to the AI ​​chief, the company will still incur losses due to the high costs of building and operating its models, and the company will likely need to raise tens of billions more to cover these expenses, the Financial Times writes.

To date, Microsoft, its largest shareholder, has committed up to $13 billion to support OpenAI. The world's most valuable company uses OpenAI models in Microsoft AI Copilot, an AI assistant for business users in the Microsoft 365 Office suite.