OpenAI targets $280B revenue by 2030, but expects to burn $111B getting there
What's the deal? OpenAI has boosted its revenue forecast to more than $280 billion by 2030, but the path there will require burning through $111 billion in additional cash, according to financial documents shared with investors. The company generated $13.1 billion in revenue last year — more than triple the prior year — and expects that to reach $30 billion in 2026.
To fund its ambitions, OpenAI is finalising a $100 billion-plus funding round that could value it at $830 billion pre-money. Nvidia is in talks to invest up to $30 billion, with SoftBank and Amazon also participating.
Why now? The company has scaled back its infrastructure spending targets. After announcing $1.4 trillion in computing commitments last year, OpenAI is now telling investors it plans to spend roughly $600 billion by 2030 — a figure it says better aligns with expected revenue growth.
Competition is intensifying. ChatGPT's web traffic share fell from 86.7% in January 2025 to 64.5% in January 2026, with Google Gemini capturing much of the loss. OpenAI declared a "code red" in December after Google's Gemini topped ChatGPT on key benchmarks.
What could go wrong? The costs are staggering and unpredictable. OpenAI's inference costs — what it spends to run its AI models — quadrupled last year, dragging gross margins down to 33% from 40%. The company had targeted 46%.
OpenAI expects to burn $25 billion in 2026 and $57 billion in 2027. It won't turn cash flow positive until 2030 — two years later than rival Anthropic projects for itself.
Chinese competitors pose a pricing threat. DeepSeek's latest model matches GPT-5 performance at one-tenth the cost.
The signal: OpenAI's financials reveal the brutal economics of the AI race. No startup in history has operated with expected losses on this scale, according to Deutsche Bank. The company expects negative free cash flow of $143 billion through 2029 — more than Amazon, Tesla, Uber, and Spotify burned combined before turning profitable.
The bet is that AI agents and enterprise tools will eventually command premium prices. OpenAI says 92% of Fortune 500 companies now use ChatGPT, and its enterprise seats grew ninefold last year.
But the window may be closing. Model performance is commoditising rapidly — the cost to match GPT-3.5 capabilities dropped 280-fold between 2022 and 2024. OpenAI is wagering that scale and speed will matter more than efficiency.
Sources:
The Information
CNBC
Yahoo Finance
Fortune
Bloomberg
RD World
Morningstar
Image source:
CNBC
B.S.
