OpenAI has more than tripled its annualized revenue over the past year, according to The Information.
Annualized revenue is an estimate for a company’s revenue for the year using partial data — in other words, you multiply the past month’s revenue by 12. OpenAI’s annualized revenue was around $1 billion last summer, $1.6 billion in late 2023, and has now reached $3.4 billion, the outlet said. CEO Sam Altman reportedly shared the news with staff in a company-wide meeting Wednesday.
OpenAI is the most valuable AI startup in the world. Its $80 billion valuation is far ahead of rivals such as Anthropic and Mistral AI. The company’s warp-speed growth is another sign of its AI products’ popularity. OpenAI recently released ChatGPT-4o, its latest AI chatbot that’s supposedly twice as fast and half as expensive as prior models. And it just unveiled a partnership with Apple to put ChatGPT-4o on the next iPhone operating system, the iOS 18.
But OpenAI isn’t without its troubles. Critics have said the company is sacrificing its responsibility to develop AI safely in its pursuit of profits. That’s why competitors such as Anthropic — which was started by former OpenAI engineers — and Inflection have sought B-Corp certifications, which “provides us with the legal mandate to prioritize the well-being and happiness of our users and wider stakeholders above all else,” Inflection says on its site.
And OpenAI has been sued by news organizations The Intercept, The New York Times, Raw Story, and AlterNet over alleged copyright infringements. Scarlett Johansson threatened to sue the company, too, when it appeared to have used a recording of her voice for the voice assistant feature “Sky” on ChatGPT-4o. OpenAI has denied Johansson’s claims.
