OpenAI’s Revenue in 2027
May 12, 2025
OpenAI is seemingly on top of the world. In October 2024, they were valued at $157B when they raised $6B. In April 2025, they announced a $40B capital raise at a $300B valuation led by Softbank.
Extrapolating recent trends, OpenAI is on track to be the fastest company ever to go from $1B to $100B in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
But OpenAI faces significant headwinds. The next two years could make or break OpenAI and the genAI industry at large.
What does OpenAI’s future look like? We at FutureSearch were the first to accurately break down OpenAI’s revenue sources, and our forecasts about AI in 2027 were featured in the New York Times. Now, we bring you a comprehensive forecast to the question: What revenue with OpenAI reach in mid-2027?
All numbers revealed with purchase of the complete forecast.
A New Record For $100B ARR?
The table shows how long it took 5 leading high growth companies to scale from $1B to $100B in revenue. Each titan, from each decade since the 1980s, reached this milestone 40% faster.
This comes from leading software/platform companies that have close to zero marginal cost and can hyperscale in an increasingly connected world.
If this trend were to continue, then a leading company of today could scale from $1B to $100B in just over 4 years! Applying this to OpenAI would indicate $100B revenue by mid-2027, which is consistent with a simple exponential growth model.
Future OpenAI Revenue Breakdown
We produced a bottom-up model for where OpenAI’s revenue is most likely to come from, across Consumer, Enterprise, Agents, and Other (which includes API). The tables below show our median breakdown, as well as the associated growth rates. In the full report we reveal all numbers and compare these breakdowns to other successful companies.
| Median | |||||||||||
| Date | Total ARR ($B) | Consumer | Enterprise | Agents | Other (API) ARR ($B) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subs (m) | $/mth | ARR($B) | Subs (m) | $/mth | ARR($B) | Subs (m) | $/mth | ARR($B) | |||
| Apr 2025 | 9 | 23 | 20 | 5.5 | 3.8 | 50 | 2.3 | 0.1 | 200 | 0.2 | 1.2 |
| Aug 2025 | 12 | 30 | 20 | 7.2 | 5.2 | 50 | 3.1 | 0.2 | 200 | 0.4 | 1.6 |
| April 2026 | 19 | 88 | 88 | 88.8 | 88.8 | 88 | 8.8 | 8.8 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.8 |
| Aug 2026 | 24 | 88 | 88 | 88.8 | 88.8 | 88 | 8.8 | 8.8 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.8 |
| Dec 2026 | 27 | 88 | 88 | 88.8 | 88.8 | 88 | 8.8 | 8.8 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.8 |
| Mar 2027 | 36 | 88 | 88 | 88.8 | 88.8 | 88 | 8.8 | 8.8 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.8 |
| Jun 2027 | 39 | 88 | 88 | 88.8 | 88.8 | 88 | 8.8 | 8.8 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.8 |
We also consider what type of agents will make what type of revenue for OpenAI:
| Median | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | ARR ($B) | Assistants | Customer Service | Knowledge workers | Software Engineers | R&D Researchers | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subs (M) | $/mth | ARR ($B) | Subs (M) | $/mth | ARR ($B) | Subs (M) | $/mth | ARR ($B) | Subs (M) | $/mth | ARR ($B) | Subs (M) | $/mth | ARR ($B) | ||
| Apr 2025 | 0.5 | 0.20 | 200 | 0.5 | 0.00 | 800 | 0.0 | 0.00 | 2000 | 0.0 | 0.00 | 10000 | 0.0 | 0.00 | 20000 | 0.0 |
| Aug 2025 | 0.7 | 0.30 | 200 | 0.7 | 0.00 | 800 | 0.0 | 0.00 | 2000 | 0.0 | 0.00 | 10000 | 0.0 | 0.00 | 20000 | 0.0 |
| April 2026 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 8888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 |
| Aug 2026 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 8888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 |
| Dec 2026 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 8888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 |
| Mar 2027 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 8888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 |
| Jun 2027 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 8888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 | 8.88 | 88888 | 8.8 |
All numbers revealed with purchase of the complete forecast.
Headwind 1: Microsoft
Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar investments in OpenAI—beginning with $1B in 2019 and culminating in a ~$10B deal in 2023—have been largely in-kind, not cash. Microsoft also receives substantial future profits: 75% until it recoups its investment, and 49% until OpenAI hits $92B in profit. These terms could deter other investors and constrain OpenAI’s cashflow, making profitability and reinvestment more difficult.
Headwind 2: Talent Loss
Research talent is arguably the most scarce resource in AI, more than GPUs or dollars or brand mindshare. OpenAI has had a poor track record of retaining their top talent, even compared to the baseline of tech companies that rarely command loyalty, especially after the failed sacking of Sam Altman by the Board of Directors in November 2023. And in fact some of their biggest competitors came straight from OpenAI.
The full report details multiple significant waves of departures. Who left when, what AI companies did they leave to join or start, and who is left leading the company from the founding team and advisory board.
- Dario Amodei, VP of Research (Jan 2021)
- Daniela Amodei, VP of Safety & Policy (Jan 2021)
- Jack Clark, Policy Director (Jan 2021)
- Sam McCandlish, Research Lead (Jan 2021)
- Tom Brown, Member of Technical Staff, led GPT-3 engineering (Jan 2021)
- Igor Babushkin, who left OpenAI in 2022 to join DeepMind, founded xAI with Elon Musk (Jan 2021)
- Andrej Karpathy, co-founder (Feb 2024)
Headwind 3: Customer Loyalty
Two years ago, OpenAI appeared to be a company like no other: its technology was revolutionary, and users loved it, with no credible alternative to ChatGPT. Today it is broadly perceived as just another pretender squabbling to claim the AI throne. Is this steep fall from grace real? Let's see what the data says.
As of May 2025, FutureSearch’s new Deep Research Bench shows that ChatGPT-o3+search (oddly, not OpenAI Deep Research) is way out in the lead in agentic web research tasks, e.g. the default when using ChatGPT with o3.
OpenAI currently has three models in Chatbot Arena's top 10: 4.5 in 3rd place, GPT-4o-latest (January 2025) tied for 5th, and o1 tied for 8th. By contrast, Google has four models in the top 10, Grok has two, and DeepSeek has one.
The full report lays out the cost-quality curve across all models, given a leading indicator of how much ChatGPT Consumer, Enterprise, and AI can grow, given how fickle consumer and enterprise customers are with genAI products.
Headwind 4: Competition
The competition that OpenAI is facing is truly drastic, and despite the positive press, OpenAI doesn’t necessarily have the best product anymore. In the start-up space, they are facing direct competition from Google DeepMind, Anthropic, xAI, and DeepSeek along with new entrants: Meta and Alibaba—not to mention Microsoft, OpenAI’s previous partner, which is now seeking to enter the frontier model space themselves.
Our full report details which competitor is projected to be OpenAI’s top threat.
