OpenAI won 13 billion and paid 21

iGuRu.gr > OpenAI won 13 billion and paid 21

OpenAI’s latest financial disclosures highlight a major problem in the boom in artificial intelligence. The technology is scaling rapidly, but the costs of building and operating it are rising even faster. The documents, obtained by independent journalist Ed Zitron, arrive as the company moves toward a potential initial public offering and reveal just how expensive modern AI systems have become. openai

They present a business that generates billions of dollars in revenue, while being burdened by even greater expenses.

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The revenue growth has been dramatic. OpenAI had revenue of $3,7 billion in 2024, before skyrocketing to $13,07 billion in 2025. By the end of that year, monthly revenue was approaching $2 billion, suggesting demand continued to accelerate. OpenAI says ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly users, though only about 50 million are subscribed to paid plans.

OpenAI will need 207 billion to continue paying off debt

However, the financial data makes it clear that there is a problem. The cost of developing AI models continues to outpace everything else. Research and development spending increased from $7,81 billion in 2024 to $19,18 billion in 2025 – an amount that, in itself, exceeded the company’s total annual revenue in both years.

These figures likely reflect the huge cost of training new models and the payments OpenAI makes to partners for the infrastructure it uses. In 2025, $10,59 billion of the company's R&D spending went to Microsoft.

Even after training the models, the costs don’t go down. Running them at scale—the constant stream of user prompts and responses—is proving just as expensive. OpenAI’s cost of revenue has increased from $2,65 billion in 2024 to $7,5 billion in 2025, a year-over-year increase that likely reflects rising costs. Every interaction comes with a computational cost, and at current usage levels, those costs add up quickly.

image: Ars Technica

The company is also spending heavily to maintain its position in an increasingly competitive market. Sales and marketing expenses rose from $1,11 billion to $5,73 billion in a single year, showing how aggressively OpenAI is trying to expand its user base. However, the results remain negative. Operating losses widened from $8,78 billion in 2024 to $20,92 billion in 2025, despite the company’s revenue growth.

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The 2025 net loss figure — nearly $39 billion — looks particularly ominous, though it’s a bit misleading. A large portion of that total comes from a one-time accounting adjustment tied to changes in investor valuations after OpenAI transitioned to a for-profit structure. Excluding that adjustment, the loss is closer to $8 billion, a figure that better reflects the company’s underlying business.

Overall, the numbers highlight a fundamental challenge facing the AI industry: the technology is not only expensive to build, but also expensive to operate continuously at scale. This reality is already shaping internal decisions. OpenAI has walked away from several initiatives, for example, shutting down its Sora video model. Around the same time, the company’s leadership noted a tighter focus on core products, particularly those aimed at developers and business users.

image: Ars Technica

There are also signs that revenue growth could come under pressure. Some enterprise customers are resisting token-based pricing and demanding clearer returns on their AI investments. At the same time, competition is intensifying. Rivals like Anthropic are putting pressure on prices, which could squeeze margins, especially if subscription prices are reduced.

Still, investor confidence has not wavered. OpenAI raised $122 billion in March at a valuation of $852 billion, one of the largest funding rounds in the sector. The company has told investors it hopes to become profitable by 2030, a goal that will depend in part on reducing training costs.

For now, the financial picture reflects a company still in a growth phase. Demand remains strong and continues to grow rapidly. The more difficult question is how long this growth can continue to outpace the cost of the infrastructure required to support it.