OpenAI’s Revenue Run Rate Tops $40 Billion Ahead of IPO

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.
This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Carol Massar** (0:32)
Safe to say, one of the most anticipated market events will eventually be, when we get them, the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI. On the latter, OpenAI is on track to generate annualized revenue of more than $40 billion based on its current performance. That's, according to people familiar with the matter, roughly doubling its run rate from the end of 2025 That sounds like a pretty good jump, don't you think?

**Tim Stenovec** (0:55)
Yeah, but you know what? There's a lot of competition out there.

**Carol Massar** (0:59)
It's growing, right?

**Tim Stenovec** (1:00)
Yeah.

**Carol Massar** (1:00)
This market changes a lot.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:01)
And they have to be very innovative, too.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:03)
OK. Yeah.

**Carol Massar** (1:04)
So you caught up with Rachel Metz earlier.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:06)
I did. I said, we got to get her back. We didn't get enough time with Rachel Metz earlier.

**Carol Massar** (1:10)
I'm glad we are doing more. Bloomberg News, AI reporter Rachel Metz. She's out there in San Francisco. Rachel, it is good to have you back. We think this is our top story. Like, as the AI trade and narrative continues, trying to understand these companies as they change, as their valuations grow, tell us about what we seem to know about OpenAI and some of these numbers that are starting to come out.

**Rachel Metz** (1:34)
Okay. So, there's a bunch going on here, right? We have...
Sorry.

**Carol Massar** (1:38)
Oh, I love it already.

**Rachel Metz** (1:40)
It's a lot.
So our reporting, me and Natasha Muskrenha, what we have determined is that OpenAI's revenue has gone up quite a bit, especially when you compare it to the last figure that we were aware of from the end of the year, which was about 20 billion. So 40 or above 40 billion is where they're tracking at now for ARR, which is, I mean, that's a lot of growth, right? The other thing that I think is interesting here is it's not just coming from one piece of their business.
Our understanding is that it is sort of across a bunch of different product lines. It's important to remember, consumers still make up the vast majority of their users. It is also still the biggest part of their business. Some of this is in consumer growth.
You saw recently that their user numbers pushed above a billion active weekly users. This would be growth in consumer in part over there. Then we're also seeing on the business side with their enterprise users that has also been growing, and some of that is with Codex. That is their coding product that they have been pushing and pushing to rival companies such as Anthropic. Okay.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:47)
We know Codex is important and we know Cloud Code is important, but on the consumer side, I'm just gonna throw Carol under the bus here for a second. I think you said this on air, but I don't know if you did. Forgive me if you didn't. But she's using these LLMs and she hits a limit on the LLM and just goes to a different one. And you know what? I do the same thing. I don't pay for any of these. I'll use ChatGPT, I'll use Cloud. When I run out of space on ChatGPT, I'll use Google's AI search overview.

**Carol Massar** (3:15)
You're right. But like, I was using ChatGPT and it involves a lot. Like, there's a big history at this point and I'm...

**Tim Stenovec** (3:23)
So that's the moat for you.

**Carol Massar** (3:25)
I'm generating an image. And I basically, they'll say, come back to me in 23 hours and 20 minutes. And you know what I'm doing?

**Tim Stenovec** (3:30)
Or pay 20 bucks a month.

**Carol Massar** (3:31)
And I'm not paying, but I'm like, all right, we're just gonna wait 24 hours. That's what I'm gonna do. But Tim's right. Like, they're telling you it's gonna cost, if you want, unfettered access.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:41)
Of those billion weekly users, how many of us are paying?

**Rachel Metz** (3:44)
Yeah.
Ooh, that is a good question. I don't know off the top of my head, and I will look into that.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:51)
I don't know if anyone knows outside of the world of OpenAI or ChatGPT, right, or the OpenAI.