“AI bubble theory exists, but the flow does not stop.” OpenAI seeks new revenue sources by opening data centers as the number of paid subscribers surpassing USD 1 billion for the first time in monthly sales is 20 million
With the recent U.S. stock market adjustment and artificial intelligence (AI) investment bubble theory raising its head, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Pryor refuted this.
In a CNBC interview on the 20th (local time), he said, “There may be a bubble element,” but “The flow of AI itself will not stop.” In response to a question about the impact of AI investment on the economy, he diagnosed it as “the beginning stage.”
“We need much larger facility investment than the Internet,” CFO Prior said. “Even now, we still lack computational resources.” It is explained that the reason why OpenAI is promoting the ‘Stargate’ project to build a 5GW data center with Oracle and Microsoft is to solve this lack of computation. He continued, “We’ve just started.” CFO Prior said that he is building infrastructure with Oracle and Coreweave, but emphasized that Microsoft (MS) is still a key partner.
CFO Prior said OpenAI’s monthly sales topped $1 billion for the first time. It is the first time in two years and eight months that OpenAI monthly sales have exceeded $1 billion since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. OpenAI recorded $3.7 billion in sales last year, and its monthly sales are now more than a quarter of last year’s total sales.
OpenAI’s sales come from ChatGPT paid personal subscriptions, Enterprise, and Edu. Annual Fixed Repeated Revenue (ARR) through paid subscriptions reached $10 billion in June. Currently, ChatGPT paid subscribers are known to have 15 million and 20 million including corporate subscribers.
OpenAI is also considering supporting other companies to utilize the data centers and physical infrastructure needed for AI in the long run. This could be a new revenue stream that could offset some of the huge costs that ChatGPT producers face. “We are loosely inspired by Amazon’s successful lease of extra cloud computing capacity to companies,” said CFO Prior. “We are not actively pursuing it because we are focusing on securing computing capabilities for our operations, but we are definitely thinking about commercialization in the long run.”
