See our August 2024 report on the unit economics and profit margins of the API.

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Analysis

Much has been said about the rapid growth of ChatGPT as a product and business. But little has been said about the relative growth rate of consumer (ChatGPT Plus) vs. business (ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Teams), and even less on the API. The estimates of ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise, and Teams make it possible to estimate API revenue by attributing to it the missing revenue from the $3.4 billion total.

FutureSearch’s analysis highlight a few surprising findings:

• Under any assumptions, individual subscribers of ChatGPT Plus still represent the lion’s share of revenue.

• ChatGPT Enterprise is rapidly growing, perhaps one of the fastest growing enterprise software systems ever.

• All products are in early stages, e.g. have more revenue in the US than mature global software products.

Sources of info on OpenAI financials

This report draws on a variety of sources, including those not easily found by search engines, e.g.:

• Personal anecdotes of pricing info from sales calls

• A blog that used DNS records to infer which Fortune 500 companies pay for ChatGPT Enterprise

• Transcripts of OpenAI exec interviews

Just as important are the data points FutureSearch rejected when they didn’t corroborate more trustworthy sources. The core assumption made here is the $3.4 billion in ARR that Bloomberg and TheInformation reported Sam Altman said in a staff meeting.

Open Questions

This analysis, and FutureSearch’s other data, open the possibility of answering other questions:

• What are OpenAI’s costs to provide ChatGPT Plus/Teams/Enterprise and the API?

• What is OpenAI’s profit margin in each of these businesses?

• What are the projected growth rates and market sizes of these LLM markets?