OpenAI sees a loss of $5 billion this year on $3.7 billion in revenue

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, at the annual Hope Global Forums meeting in Atlanta on Dec. 11, 2023.
Dustin Chambers Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, expects to lose about 5 billion of 3.7 billion dollars in revenue this year, CNBC confirmed.
The company made $300 million in revenue last month, up 1,700% from the start of last year, and expects to bring in $11.6 billion next year, according to a person close to OpenAI who asked not to be identified because the numbers are confidential. .
The New York Times first reported on OpenAI’s financials earlier Friday after looking at the company’s filings. CNBC has not seen the funds.
OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, is currently pursuing a funding round that could value the company at more than $150 billion, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. Thrive Capital is leading the round and plans to invest $1 billion, while Tiger Global plans to join as well.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told investors in an email Thursday that the funding round is oversubscribed and will close next week. His note followed several key departures, most notably chief technology officer Mira Murati, who announced the previous day that she was leaving OpenAI after six and a half years.
And this week, news broke that OpenAI’s board is considering plans to restructure the company into a for-profit entity. The company will keep its nonprofit division as a separate entity, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. This structure will be more transparent for investors and make it easier for OpenAI employees to see that they have money, the source said.
OpenAI services have risen in popularity since the company launched ChatGPT in late 2022. The company sells subscriptions to various tools and licenses its GPT family of large language models, which are powering a large part of the AI ​​boom. Running those models requires huge investments Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
The Times, citing an analysis by a financial expert who reviewed OpenAI’s documents, reported that the roughly $5 million in lost revenue this year is related to the cost of running its facilities as well as employee salaries and office rent. The cost does not include stock-based compensation, “among several large costs not fully explained in the documents,” the paper said.
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