OpenAI nears $1.35 billion of annual sales as ChatGPT takes off

San Francisco – OpenAI is on track for US$1 billion (S$1.35 billion) of annual revenue as businesses adopt the technology behind ChatGPT, the generative AI bot that ignited a wave of artificial intelligence (AI) investment.

Earlier, the ChatGPT maker projected US$200 million in revenue for 2023.

The start-up backed by Microsoft is earning about US$80 million of revenue monthly, a person briefed on the matter said. This compares with just US$28 million in all of 2022.

The Information first reported on OpenAI’s revenue, including that it lost around US$540 million in 2022 developing GPT-4 and ChatGPT. A representative for the start-up did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside normal business hours.

OpenAI is regarded as one of several companies at the forefront of generative AI, which can create content from videos to poetry out of a few simple user commands. Since debuting its bot in November, OpenAI has worked with companies from fledgling firms to major corporations to incorporate the technology in their businesses and products.

In August, it launched a corporate version of ChatGPT with added features and privacy safeguards, the start-up’s most significant effort yet to attract a broad mix of business customers and boost revenue from its best-known product.

The roll-out of ChatGPT Enterprise is a move forward in OpenAI’s plans to make money from its ubiquitous chatbot, which is enormously popular but very expensive to operate because robust AI models require lots of computing power.

The San Francisco-based start-up has already taken steps towards generating revenue from ChatGPT, such as by selling a premium subscription and offering companies paid access to its application programming interface, which developers can use to add the chatbot to other apps. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS