Consumer Subscriptions Account for 75% of OpenAI's Revenue
Seventy-five percent of OpenAI's revenue reportedly comes from consumer subscriptions. OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar also told Bloomberg TV Monday (Oct. 28) that the company’s ChatGPT has 250 million weekly active users and that 5% to 6% of free users sign up for the paid product, Bloomberg reported Monday.
Corporate Customers Expansion
At the same time, OpenAI is working to gain more corporate customers, according to the report. Friar said the company is “really excited by the potential there,” per the report. The company’s first three business products gained more than 1 million paying business users within a year of the first product’s launch, PYMNTS reported in September. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Enterprise in August 2023, ChatGPT Team in January and ChatGPT Edu in May. More than half of the business products’ paying users are outside the United States.
Financial Growth
The company nearly doubled its valuation to $157 billion after raising $6.6 billion in new funding in early October. OpenAI was previously valued at $86 billion when some employees sold their shares early in the year. It was reported Sept. 27 that OpenAI expects its yearly sales to total $3.7 billion in 2024 and $11.6 billion in 2025. However, the company expects to lose about $5 billion this year after paying for operational costs, salaries, and overhead.
Innovations and Partnerships
OpenAI recently introduced software called Swarm that unleashes teams of AI agents to tackle complex tasks and allows specialized AI helpers to hand off tasks to each other. There’s a growing interest in AI agents for tasks ranging from automating customer service interactions to managing complex supply chains and executing financial transactions without human oversight. On Oct. 8, OpenAI and Hearst formed a content partnership that will see Hearst’s newspaper and domestic magazine content integrated into OpenAI’s generative AI products, including ChatGPT, and made available to ChatGPT’s users. In September, OpenAI began rolling out its Advanced Voice to all Plus and Team users in the ChatGPT app. In the countries in which this voice feature is available, users can now choose from nine “lifelike output voices” for ChatGPT, with different tones and characters like “easygoing and versatile” and “animated and earnest.”
