OpenAI's Revenue Outlook: the Possibilities and Challenges of Going Beyond $1 Billion

Recently, there have been reports ofOpenAIRumors of bankruptcy have attracted a lot of attention. However, according to the latest reports and analysis, these rumors may be nonsense. According to Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at Tianfeng Securities, theOpenAIBankruptcy at the end of 2024 is not very likely. Instead, OpenAIInternally, it expects to realize more than $1 billion in revenue over the next 12 months, which would put it at more than $80 million per month. This figure far exceeds previous revenue expectations OpenAI shared with shareholders.

OpenAI's business model has had a profound impact on the entire field of big models. With a rapid increase in the number of users, OpenAI is quickly on the road toChatGPTThe path to monetization. In February, OpenAI launchedChatGPT Plus subscription plan, starting at $20 per month In May, OpenAI further opened up the GPT-4 third-party plug-in functionality to Plus subscribers only, in order to promote user fees.

In order to realize profitability, OpenAI needs to find a way to increase the payment rate. Recently, OpenAI has begun to shift its business mindset from the C-end to the B-end. on August 29th, OpenAI released an enterprise version of ChatGPT, focused on serving large enterprises. This version provides unrestricted access to high-priority GPT-4, tripled inference speed, and expanded the context window by 4x to 32,000 Tokens.At the same time, the enterprise version also provides advanced data analytics features and a user privacy security solution at the compliance level.

Founder Securities pointed out in its July 21 report that OpenAI's total logic of profitability is to increase the GPT-4 payment ratio and reduce GPT-3.5 costs. If it can compress the cost and improve the payment rate, OpenAI is expected to realize break-even. TakeMicrosoft corporationCalculating the $10 billion capital injected for OpenAI at the beginning of the year, OpenAI may be able to get out of the loss-making status in January 2026 if the ratio of daily and monthly activities reaches 35%, and under the condition that the payment rate improves to 0.25% month by month. And if the payment rate is raised to 0.5% per month, it may be able to turn from loss to profit in November 2025.

Although OpenAI does not currently have a full sales force, its products have been somewhat successful in the market. According to data.ai, as of June 19, 2023, ChatGPT iOS side of the first month of the launch of the daily activity of the payment rate of about 4.36%. this shows the willingness of users to pay for OpenAI products.

For OpenAI, 12% monthly payout rate will be its break-even line. Despite some challenges and difficulties, OpenAI still has great potential to achieve this goal. Withartificial intelligence (AI)With the continued development of the technology and increased user demand, OpenAI is expected to realize more than $1 billion in revenue in the coming year.