OpenAI Hits $1 Billion Monthly Revenue Amid Infrastructure Push

OpenAI achieved a financial milestone in July 2025, generating $1 billion in monthly revenue and reaching $10 billion in annual recurring revenue. Despite this growth, the company remains unprofitable and faces a chronic shortage of GPUs and computing power. CFO Sarah Friar stated the company is constantly undercompute, noting that OpenAI possesses models more advanced than GPT-5 that cannot be deployed due to these capacity constraints.

To resolve these bottlenecks, CEO Sam Altman indicated the company may spend trillions of dollars on data center construction. This expansion includes the Stargate project, a venture involving partnerships with Oracle and SoftBank Group. OpenAI is diversifying its infrastructure partners to include Coreweave and is exploring debt financing from banks and private equity to fund the buildout. Friar compared this phase to the historical development of railroads and electricity, suggesting OpenAI may eventually rent spare cloud capacity to other businesses to offset costs and protect its intellectual property.

While expanding its physical footprint, the company faced a setback with the release of GPT-5. Altman admitted the company totally screwed up the launch, which was rolled back after users criticized the model's cold and harsh personality. Altman also acknowledged that investors may be overexcited about AI, though he maintains the technology is revolutionary. Additionally, the company is now funding research into brain-computer interfaces.