OpenAI is on track to generate more than $40 billion in annualised revenue based on its current performance, roughly doubling its run rate from the end of 2025 and showing the rapid acceleration of the ChatGPT maker’s business. The growth strengthens the company’s ambitions for a potential Wall Street debut, with OpenAI among the technology companies preparing for what could become one of the most closely watched public listings in the AI industry.
People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that OpenAI’s revenue has accelerated in recent months, driven in part by strong demand for its AI coding software. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is not public. Growth has also been supported by subscription sales and the company’s nascent advertising business, while its core consumer business continues to expand.
A company’s annualised revenue run rate projects full-year revenue based on performance over a shorter period and is not the same as reported annual revenue. OpenAI’s latest figure represents a sharp increase from the more than $20 billion annualised revenue the company had reached by the end of last year, according to comments previously made by Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar.
Coding and AI agents fuel growth
OpenAI has seen a sharp uptick in demand for its AI agents in recent weeks, particularly Codex, its coding-focused product, as businesses increasingly use AI for complex technical and workplace tasks. ChatGPT Work is also aimed at a wider range of professional use cases.
The acceleration comes as OpenAI competes aggressively for business customers with Anthropic PBC and a growing field of Chinese AI companies. OpenAI has also cut prices on certain models as it seeks to make its products more competitive with lower-cost alternatives.
Anthropic has emerged as a particularly strong rival in the enterprise market, gaining traction with AI tools designed to streamline complex tasks, including software development. The company said in May that its run-rate revenue had crossed $47 billion, although the two companies may not calculate or report their run-rate figures on the same basis.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidential paperwork to go public. Anthropic is expected to pursue an initial public offering as soon as this fall, potentially putting it ahead of OpenAI in accessing public markets.
OpenAI changes its revenue leadership
Meanwhile, OpenAI is changing the executive responsible for turning its growing demand into a larger commercial operation. Dali Rajic is joining the company as Chief Revenue Officer, leading its global revenue organisation.
Rajic takes over from Denise Dresser, who will leave OpenAI to pursue other opportunities following a transition period. Dresser helped build the company’s commercial organisation during a formative period for both OpenAI and the broader enterprise AI market, strengthening relationships with major customers and establishing the foundation for its expanding business.
OpenAI said its products now reach more than one billion weekly active users and more than two million businesses, twice as many as a year ago.
“OpenAI brings together research, products, deployment, and infrastructure to make AI more capable, more affordable, and broadly useful. Our products now reach more than one billion weekly active users and more than two million businesses—twice as many as a year ago. Denise Dresser helped make that possible. During a formative period for both OpenAI and the enterprise AI market, she built the team, strengthened relationships with major customers, and established the commercial foundation that has brought our business to this point. Denise will leave OpenAI to pursue other opportunities following a transition period, during which she will work closely with the business team to support our customers. We’re deeply grateful for her leadership and everything she’s done for OpenAI.”
Rajic tasked with scaling the next phase
Rajic brings extensive experience in building metrics-driven revenue organisations and selling to large enterprises as well as technical customers. Most recently, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Wiz, which was recently acquired by Google, where he helped establish the operating discipline and customer-focused execution behind one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity companies. Before Wiz, Rajic served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Zscaler and as Chief Customer and Revenue Officer at AppDynamics. At OpenAI, his mandate will be to build a more scalable revenue operation as the company moves from rapid product adoption to deeper enterprise deployment.