How much money does OpenAI make, and is it profitable?

Where the numbers come from

Listed companies must publish checked results every quarter. Private companies do not, so the numbers come from other places:

• Statements by the company or its leaders, often in interviews or posts.
• Press reports based on documents shown to investors.
• Funding announcements, which give a valuation, not revenue.

Is OpenAI profitable?

OpenAI does not publish its accounts, so nobody outside the company can say for sure. OpenAI’s leaders have said that it spends more than it earns, mostly on computing power, and press reports of its investor documents say it expects losses for several more years.

Spending more than you earn is normal for a fast-growing company, as long as investors keep paying for it. That is why questions such as “will OpenAI run out of money?” come up. The answer depends on whether its revenue keeps growing faster than its costs.

Read revenue claims carefully

Companies often give an “annualized” figure: one month of revenue multiplied by twelve. That number can be much higher than what the company earned over the past year.

Revenue is not profit. AI labs spend large sums on chips, data centres and staff, so a company can grow revenue fast and still lose money.

Follow it at the source

Newstake shows what OpenAI and Sam Altman publish, with a link to each original post. Microsoft, which owns a stake in OpenAI, reports some details about it in its own results.