OpenAI is eyeing a massive revenue milestone as CFO Sarah Friar announced that reaching $11 billion in revenue in 2025 is “definitely in the realm of possibility.” This ambitious target would represent a threefold increase from the company’s 2024 performance, signaling extraordinary growth in the competitive AI landscape.
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Friar revealed OpenAI’s impressive revenue trajectory: the company hit $1 billion in revenue in 2023, then “over 3X-ed” that figure in 2024 to reach approximately $3.7 billion. This exponential growth comes despite mounting losses, with the New York Times reporting in September that OpenAI was on track to lose $5 billion in 2024.
User growth remains robust, with weekly active users jumping 33% since December to reach 400 million users—approximately 5% of the world’s population. This metric is particularly significant as OpenAI navigates increasing competition from rivals like China’s DeepSeek and other AI model developers.
The growth figures emerge at a critical time for OpenAI, as the company is currently in talks with SoftBank for a $40 billion investment that would value the ChatGPT maker at around $300 billion. Friar explained that investors are looking beyond current growth rates to envision what the company could become over the next five years, enabling OpenAI to command premium valuations.
Addressing commoditization concerns, Friar firmly dismissed suggestions that the AI industry is becoming commoditized despite increasingly similar outputs from rival models. “We are so far from being a commodity industry,” she stated, pointing to OpenAI’s recent innovations like Deep Research and Operator as evidence of a “reinforcement cycle” of continuous improvement.
On Friday, OpenAI announced a wider international rollout of its Operator AI agent to ChatGPT Pro subscribers. The autonomous tool, which can perform tasks like booking tickets and making reservations, will be available in most regions where ChatGPT operates.
The company also faces external challenges, including an unsolicited $97.4 billion takeover bid from Elon Musk, a cofounder who departed in 2018. OpenAI’s board rejected the offer last week, maintaining its independent trajectory toward its ambitious revenue goals.
Key Quotes
Investors look not just at your growth rate when you’re young like us, but they say, ‘what could this company look like over the next five years?’
CFO Sarah Friar explained to CNBC how OpenAI justifies its $300 billion valuation target despite current losses, emphasizing that investors are betting on long-term potential rather than immediate profitability.
We are so far from being a commodity industry.
Friar pushed back against concerns that AI models are becoming commoditized as competitors like DeepSeek produce increasingly similar outputs, arguing that OpenAI’s innovation cycle maintains differentiation.
There is a reinforcement cycle here as we get better and better at innovating.
The CFO pointed to recent product releases like Deep Research and Operator as evidence that OpenAI’s user growth and revenue gains are driven by continuous product improvements rather than market saturation.
Our Take
OpenAI’s aggressive revenue targets reveal a company racing to establish market dominance before the AI landscape consolidates. The 33% user growth since December, despite DeepSeek’s emergence, suggests OpenAI has built meaningful brand loyalty and product stickiness that transcends pure model performance comparisons.
However, the $5 billion loss figure raises questions about path to profitability. The company appears to be following the “growth at all costs” playbook that defined previous tech eras, betting that scale and market position will eventually translate to sustainable economics. The $40 billion SoftBank investment talks indicate capital markets remain willing to fund this strategy.
The Operator rollout represents OpenAI’s strategic shift toward agentic AI—systems that act autonomously rather than just respond to prompts. This could unlock new revenue streams beyond API access and subscriptions, potentially justifying the ambitious $11 billion target. The real test will be whether enterprise customers adopt these autonomous agents at scale, transforming OpenAI from a chatbot company into an AI automation platform.
Why This Matters
OpenAI’s revenue projections and growth metrics represent a critical indicator of the AI industry’s commercial viability and market maturation. The potential threefold revenue increase demonstrates that enterprise and consumer adoption of AI tools is accelerating beyond early-adopter phases into mainstream usage.
The 400 million weekly active users milestone signals that AI has achieved unprecedented scale, reaching 5% of global population—a penetration rate that took social media platforms years to accomplish. This validates the transformative potential of generative AI and suggests sustainable demand for AI services.
The $300 billion valuation discussions with SoftBank reflect investor confidence in AI’s long-term economic impact, despite current losses. This pattern mirrors other transformative technology companies that prioritized growth over profitability in early stages. For the broader tech ecosystem, OpenAI’s trajectory sets benchmarks for AI startup valuations and investment strategies.
Friar’s dismissal of commoditization concerns is particularly significant as it addresses a key industry debate: whether AI models will become undifferentiated utilities or maintain competitive moats through continuous innovation. OpenAI’s position suggests the company believes sustained R&D investment can maintain differentiation, which has implications for the entire AI competitive landscape and business model sustainability.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-cfo-revenue-forecast-chatgpt-2025-2