OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said Thursday (Feb. 20) that it’s within “the realm of possibility” that the company could achieve $11 billion in revenue.
OpenAI’s continuing innovations have kept it from becoming a “commodity,” Friar told CNBC in an interview.
CNBC reported in September that OpenAI expected $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue in 2024 and that an unnamed source said the company expected its revenue to leap to $11.6 billion in 2025.
On Thursday, Friar addressed questions about whether OpenAI will go public by saying that the company’s growth rate appeals to potential investors.
“In terms of a multiple to pay for stock like ours, there’s incredible interest at the moment,” Friar said, per the report.
This report came on the same day that OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap told CNBC in an interview that the startup’s monthly weekly active user figure reached 400 million, up 33% from 300 million in December.
Lightcap also said OpenAI’s enterprise business now has 2 million paying users, around double the number it had in September.
“We get a lot of benefits and a tailwind from the organic consumer adoption where people already have familiarity with the product,” Lightcap said, per the report. “There’s really healthy growth on a different curve.”
OpenAI is bleeding money, PYMNTS reported Feb. 13. The company has raised $21.9 billion thus far, according to Crunchbase, but it is expected to lose $44 billion in total before becoming profitable in 2029, when revenue is projected to reach $100 billion, according to financial documents seen by The Information last October.
It was reported Feb. 10 that a group of investors led by Elon Musk submitted an unsolicited offer to OpenAI’s board of directors to buy the nonprofit that controls the company for $97.4 billion.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a Feb. 10 post on social platform X: “No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” referring to Musk-owned X by its former name and offering one-tenth the price the group offered for the OpenAI nonprofit.
Source: https://www.pymnts.com/
