OpenAI’s revenue soared past US$20 billion (A$29.8 billion) in 2025 from $6 billion in 2024, according to Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar.
Writing in a blog post, Friar said annualised recurring revenue (ARR) generated by the artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment company had followed the same growth pattern as compute, which is the power used to train and run its AI models.
She said compute grew three times (3X) year-over-year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025, from 0.2 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 to 0.6 GW in 2024 and about 1.9 GW in 2025.
Revenue followed the same curve, growing 3X year-over-year or 10X from 2023 to 2025, from $2 billion ARR in 2023 to $6 billion in 2024 and more than $20 billion in 2025.
“This is never-before-seen growth at such scale. And we firmly believe that more compute in these periods would have led to faster customer adoption and monetisation,” Friar wrote in the post.
Friar did not detail the profitability of the OpenAI, which consists of a non-profit foundation and a controlled for-profit public benefit corporation, but it is known to have a high cash burn rate due to its massive investments in compute resources, data storage and electricity.
OpenAI, which is best known for its ChatGPT AI-powered chatbot, relies heavily on external investors like Microsoft and venture funds to finance its rapid growth.
The company said last week it would start showing advertisements in ChatGPT to some United States users to generate revenue from the chatbot.
Friar wrote that weekly active user (WAU) and daily active user (DAU) figures continued to reach all-time highs with growth driven by “a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetisation”.
“Investment in compute powers leading-edge research and step-change gains in model capability. Stronger models unlock better products and broader adoption of the OpenAI platform. Adoption drives revenue, and revenue funds the next wave of compute and innovation. The cycle compounds,” she said.
