OpenAI Faces $1 Trillion Bet: Can $13B in Revenue Scale Fast Enough?

[cryptobro]

OpenAI is pulling in serious money — roughly $13 billion in annual revenue, according to the Financial Times. Around 70% of that comes from everyday users paying $20/month for ChatGPT Plus, despite only 5% of its 800 million regular users being paying subscribers.

But revenue is just one side of the story. OpenAI has also committed to spending over $1 trillion in the next decade — largely on computing infrastructure. Deals with Oracle, Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom already lock the company into more than 26 gigawatts of computing capacity. That scale dwarfs its current revenue streams.

To close the gap, OpenAI is rolling out a five-year plan. According to FT, the company is exploring government contracts, enterprise tools, video services, consumer hardware, and even becoming a computing supplier itself through its Stargate data center project.

The stakes are high. Major U.S. companies are leaning on OpenAI to fulfill key contracts, and analysts warn that if OpenAI stumbles, the ripple effects could destabilize parts of the broader U.S. tech and financial market.

[kelson10]

OpenAI’s growth trajectory is staggering — scaling to trillion-level valuation will test execution.

[Nahid10]

The real question is whether revenue growth can keep pace with AI development costs.