OpenAI

OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads surpasses $1B ARR within 200 days post-launch

In less than 200 days after its launch, OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate. The platform services tens of thousands of advertisers globally and continues to expand, with new features such as direct ad purchases through its Ads Manager now available across markets like India, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Through diversified offerings like advertising, subscriptions, and enterprise APIs, OpenAI leverages ChatGPT as a gateway for businesses to reach over 1 billion weekly active users. With an increasing global client base and expansion to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the platform supports efforts to offer tailored advertising experiences with features such as CPC bidding, optimized bidding, and advanced measurement tools. Advertisers have reported strong returns on ad spend and high rates of new customer acquisition driven by ad clicks. OpenAI plans further geographical expansion and new ad formats to fuel continued growth.

OpenAI ARR in July topped all of Q2 2026

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar announced to employees that their annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in July 2026 exceeded the entire second quarter ARR, emphasizing sustained growth driven by strong adoption of the GPT-5.6 series, enterprise product ChatGPT Work, and Code tool Codex. But some others said she was referring to Net New ARR. The new annualized subscription revenue added in July alone exceeded OpenAI’s total actual revenue for all 3 months of Q2 combined.The company aims to justify its $852 billion valuation ahead of a potential IPO, with current efforts to attract enterprise and developer clients to fund expansion and infrastructure investment plans.

OpenAI's Codex surpasses 7M active users up 10x in 6 months

OpenAI announced reaching over 7 million active users for its AI tools, including Codex and ChatGPT Work. This milestone reflects growing adoption across both consumer and enterprise applications. The company celebrated by providing a 'banked reset' feature for users to replenish weekly usage limits, which underscores a user-centric approach to engagement. This growth reinforces OpenAI’s position in the burgeoning AI market, suggesting high demand and strong stickiness for its offerings.

OpenAI acquired AI personal finance startup Hiro

Hiro is an AI personal CFO platform that helped clients manage over $1 billion in assets.While terms were not disclosed, the deal is being viewed as an acquihire. Founder Ethan Bloch and approximately 10 employees are joining OpenAI. Bloch is a seasoned fintech entrepreneur who previously sold Digit for over $200 million.Hiro launched its AI tool about five months ago, focusing on "what-if" financial modeling (e.g., salary, debt, and cost analysis). It was specifically engineered to solve the historical struggle of LLMs: accurate financial math.This acquisition signals OpenAI's growing interest in specialized financial applications, potentially strengthening ChatGPT's utility for business finance teams and individual financial planning.

OpenAI Acquires TBPN to Accelerate Global AI Conversation

OpenAI's Bold Move: Acquiring TBPNOpenAI, a leading AI Infrastructure company with a current ARR of $25B and a growth rate of +179%, has announced the acquisition of Technology Business Programming Network (TBPN), a rapidly growing media company known for its live tech talk show. This strategic move is aimed at accelerating the global conversation around AI and ensuring that the technology's impact is understood and discussed constructively.Why TBPN?TBPN has established itself as a platform where the daily conversation about AI and its builders takes place. Fidji Simo, sharing the news with the company, highlighted TBPN's strong editorial instincts, deep audience understanding, and the ability to convene influential voices across tech, business, and culture. The acquisition is not just about bringing TBPN's team on board but also about supporting and scaling what they have built while preserving their editorial independence.A core part of this acquisition is ensuring that TBPN continues to run their programming, choose their guests, and make their own editorial decisions. This independence is seen as foundational to their credibility and is explicitly protected as part of the agreement. OpenAI is excited to bring TBPN's communications and marketing instincts to their team, leveraging their talent to innovate on how AI is brought to the world and helping people understand the full impact of this technology on their daily lives.TBPN's Perspective“Over the past year, we’ve had a front-row seat not just to OpenAI, but to the entire ecosystem... Moving from commentary to real impact in how this technology is distributed and understood globally is incredibly important to us.” — Jordi Hays, co-founder and co-host of TBPNTBPN's co-founder and co-host, Jordi Hays, emphasized the importance of moving from mere commentary to having a real impact on how AI technology is distributed and understood globally. This acquisition signifies a significant step towards that goal.TBPN will become a part of OpenAI's Strategy organization, reporting to Chris Lehane. The acquisition is expected to bring a fresh perspective and dynamic approach to OpenAI's communications and marketing efforts, enhancing the company's ability to engage with the broader tech ecosystem.

OpenAI Secures $122B in Funding, Valuation Soars to $852B

OpenAI has announced the closure of a historic funding round, reaching a post-money valuation of $852 billion. The round, which totaled $122 billion of committed capital, exceeded the initial $110 billion figure announced in February. This significant increase underscores the growing confidence in the company's potential as it gears up for a possible IPO.SoftBank co-led the funding round alongside other prominent investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and D. E. Shaw Ventures. OpenAI also extended participation to investors through bank channels for the first time, raising an additional $3 billion from individual investors. Microsoft, a longtime partner of OpenAI, participated in the round, although the size of its investment was not disclosed.OpenAI reported generating $2 billion in revenue per month, amounting to $13.1 billion in revenue for the previous year. Despite this substantial income, the company is still not profitable and continues to burn cash. The funding round's success suggests that investors are willing to overlook short-term profitability in favor of the company's long-term growth prospects.Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank had previously committed $110 billion, with Amazon agreeing to invest up to $50 billion, Nvidia investing $30 billion, and SoftBank also investing $30 billion. The additional $12 billion came from a broader pool of investors. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, will be under pressure to justify the company's massive valuation as it prepares for a potential IPO.OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, launched in 2022, has been a catalyst for the company's rapid growth, now supporting over 900 million weekly active users, including more than 50 million subscribers. The company's statement highlights AI's role in driving productivity gains, accelerating scientific discovery, and expanding the capabilities of individuals and organizations. The funding will enable OpenAI to continue leading at a scale that meets the demands of the current market.

OpenAI Ads hit $100M in 6 weeks

OpenAI to Acquire Astral, Boosting Python Developer Tools

On March 19, 2026, OpenAI announced its intention to acquire Astral, a company known for developing widely used open-source Python tools. This acquisition signifies OpenAI's commitment to expanding its Codex ecosystem and strengthening the Python developer tools landscape.Expanding Codex Beyond CodingCodex, which has experienced a 3x user growth and a 5x usage increase since the beginning of the year, aims to move beyond AI that simply generates code. OpenAI's vision is to develop systems that can participate in the entire development workflow, including planning changes, modifying codebases, running tools, verifying results, and maintaining software over time. Astral's developer tools are a natural fit for this workflow, and their integration with Codex is expected to enable AI agents to work more directly with the tools developers already rely on.Python has become a crucial language in modern software development, and Astral's open-source tools play a significant role in this ecosystem. Tools like uv, Ruff, and ty simplify dependency and environment management, provide fast linting and formatting, and enforce type safety across codebases, respectively. These tools help developers manage projects, enforce quality, and catch errors early in the development process. With Astral joining OpenAI, these open-source projects will continue to be supported, and their seamless integration with Codex will be explored to enable AI systems to operate across the full Python development workflow.What's Next for OpenAI and AstralThe acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval. Until the closing, OpenAI and Astral will remain separate and independent companies. Post-closing, the Astral team will join the Codex team at OpenAI, and deeper integrations will be explored to develop Codex into a true collaborator across the development lifecycle. The goal is to build AI systems that help people create, learn, and build faster, and make powerful development tools accessible to more people everywhere.

OpenAI Acquires Promptfoo to Boost AI Security

OpenAI has announced its intention to acquire Promptfoo, an AI safety platform that assists enterprises in identifying and fixing vulnerabilities within AI systems during the development phase. This acquisition is aimed at accelerating the intelligent agent security testing and assessment capabilities of OpenAI Frontier, the platform used for building and operating AI collaborative partners.As AI collaborative partners are deployed into real business processes, assessment, security, and compliance have become fundamental requirements. Enterprises require systematic methods to test agent behavior, uncover risks before deployment, and maintain clear records to support long-term supervision, governance, and accountability.The Promptfoo team, led by Ian Webster and Michael D’Angelo, has built a robust set of tools that have earned the trust of over 25% of Fortune 500 companies. They also maintain a widely used open-source command-line interface (CLI) and libraries for evaluating and red team testing of large language model (LLM) applications. OpenAI plans to continue building on this open-source project while enhancing the enterprise-level capabilities integrated within Frontier.Key Capabilities to be IntegratedPlatform-Built Security and Assurance Testing: Automation of security testing and red team testing capabilities will become a native part of the Frontier platform, helping enterprises identify and fix various risks, including prompt injections, jailbreaks, data leaks, tool misuse, and agent behaviors outside of policy boundaries.Security and Assessment Integrated into Development Workflow: Frontier will deeply integrate related workflows to identify, investigate, and fix agent risks earlier, making security a core part of enterprise AI system development and operation.Supervision and Accountability: Integrated reporting and traceability capabilities will help organizations document testing processes, monitor long-term changes, and meet the growing requirements for AI governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC).“Promptfoo was born out of an urgent need to equip developers with practical capabilities to safeguard AI security. As AI agents become more closely connected to real data and systems, securing and verifying them becomes more challenging and critical than ever. Joining OpenAI allows us to accelerate our efforts to provide stronger security and governance capabilities for teams building real-world AI systems.” — Ian Webster, Co-founder and CEO of PromptfooOpenAI warmly welcomes the Promptfoo team and looks forward to working together to build comprehensive tools for enterprises to safely and reliably implement AI applications. The completion of this acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions.

OpenClaw Creator Peter Steinberger Joins OpenAI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced that Peter Steinberger, the creator of the AI agent OpenClaw, is joining the company. OpenClaw, which was launched last month, has surged in popularity due to its ability to automate tasks and manage online services without constant human guidance.Details of the MoveAltman stated that OpenClaw will 'live in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support.' Steinberger, an Austrian software developer, will be joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. Altman praised Steinberger as 'a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people.'OpenAI, valued at $500 billion, faces intense competition in the generative AI market, particularly from Google and Anthropic. Anthropic's Claude has been gaining traction, especially with the recent introduction of Claude Opus 4.6, which is said to be better at coding and sustaining tasks for longer periods.OpenClaw has spread quickly, especially in China, where it can be paired with Chinese-developed language models and configured to work with Chinese messaging apps. Baidu, a Chinese search engine, plans to give users of its main smartphone app direct access to OpenClaw.Some researchers have expressed concerns about the openness of OpenClaw and the potential cyberthreats that could arise from users' ability to tweak it. This move by OpenAI to incorporate OpenClaw into its offerings signals a strategic expansion into the personal AI agent market, which is expected to become core to their product line.

5% of 800M users paying for ChatGPT

Latest OpenAI numbers from the FT: 800M users, 5% paying (40M). $13bn in ARR. Implies a $325 annual ARPU, or $27/month per paying user. 70% of revenue from subscriptions, rest is API. $8B loss in H1, prob $20B run rate loss now. So basically spending $3 for each $1 in revenue.

Sora hit 1M downloads faster than ChatGPT

Sora saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, compared with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads during its first week.

OpenAI acquires Statsig for $1.1B

1. Acquire product testing startup Statsig in an all-stock deal valued at $1.1 billion, making it one of OpenAI’s largest acquisitions to date. 2. Statsig’s founder and CEO, Vijaye Raji, will join OpenAI as CTO of Applications, reporting to Fidji Simo, the new CEO of Applications. Raji will oversee product engineering for ChatGPT, Codex, and future OpenAI applications. 3. OpenAI’s chief product officer, Kevin Weil, will move to lead a new group called OpenAI for Science, focusing on AI-powered scientific discovery. 4. Srinivas Narayanan, OpenAI’s current head of engineering, will become CTO of B2B applications, working with COO Brad Lightcap.

OpenAI Hits $1B in Monthly Revenue

OpenAI has surged to an annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of approximately $12 billion, reflecting a dramatic doubling of revenue in just the first seven months of 2025. This explosive growth is largely fueled by skyrocketing demand for its AI offerings, with ChatGPT now boasting around 700 million weekly active users, including millions of paying business customers. This acceleration firmly plants OpenAI at the forefront of the generative AI economy. At the core of OpenAI’s success lies its suite of intelligent products—ChatGPT subscriptions, API-powered enterprise tools, and cutting-edge models like GPT-5, GPT-4.1, and its “mini” and “nano” variants. These tools address critical enterprise needs such as contextual reasoning, multimodal content generation, automating workflows, and advanced research assistance, all delivered through scalable, API-first services and premium subscription tiers. The seamless integration of novel models and features allows OpenAI to monetize both consumer interest and high-value corporate demand efficiently. OpenAI’s staggering growth is underpinned by substantial capital backing and ambitious infrastructure investments. As of early 2025, the company reached a $300 billion valuation after raising approximately $40 billion in fresh funding. However, this meteoric rise comes with equally formidable costs: projected cash burn for 2025 has increased to around $8 billion due to physical infrastructure buildout and compute demands. OpenAI is also exploring new revenue lines, such as leasing out AI-ready data centers and compute infrastructure, to help offset these soaring expenses.

OpenAI Acquires Jony Ive's Startup io for $6.5 Billion

OpenAI's Landmark AcquisitionOpenAI, the company behind the leading artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, has announced its largest acquisition to date with the purchase of io, a device startup launched by Jony Ive, the former Apple designer known for his work on iconic products like the iPhone. The deal is valued at $6.5 billion, signifying a major step for OpenAI into the physical realm of AI-enabled devices.Bringing Together Tech GiantsThe acquisition unites two significant figures in the tech industry: Jony Ive, who is renowned for his design contributions to Apple, and Sam Altman, OpenAI's Chief Executive and a prominent figure in AI development. In a joint video announcement, Altman outlined their mission to 'create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things.'Revolutionizing AI DevicesAltman expressed his belief that current devices, such as laptops and phones, are outdated and not optimized for AI. He emphasized the need for tools that work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world. This acquisition is seen as a decisive step to shape the user experience end-to-end, securing world-class design expertise and product engineering talent, which is essential for translating powerful AI models into tangible, intuitive platform-powered experiences.The Future of Physical AIThe technology, often referred to as 'physical AI,' moves AI from the realm of software into tangible objects, such as robots, autonomous vehicles, glasses, or other wearable technologies. The race for dominating and shaping this field is expected to accelerate with OpenAI's strategic moves.Next StepsIve and his design firm LoveFrom will assume design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io. While the exact details of their plans are not yet public, Altman and Ive have promised to share their work next year. Prior to this deal, OpenAI already owned 23% of io through a collaborative agreement established last year. The acquisition is expected to close in the summer of 2025.

OpenAI Acquires Rockset to Boost AI Data Capabilities

OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence research and deployment company, has announced the acquisition of Rockset, a top-tier real-time analytics database company. This move is aimed at enhancing OpenAI's retrieval infrastructure, thereby making AI more helpful and accessible to users, developers, and enterprises.Key FactsRockset is known for its world-class data indexing and querying capabilities.The acquisition will integrate Rockset's technology into OpenAI's products.Rockset's team will join OpenAI, bringing their expertise in data retrieval to the company's offerings.Context and AnalysisAI's potential to transform data usage across various sectors is significant. By acquiring Rockset, OpenAI is positioning itself to offer more robust data handling and real-time analytics capabilities to its customers. This integration is expected to empower users to leverage their data more effectively, particularly when building intelligent applications.“Rockset’s infrastructure empowers companies to transform their data into actionable intelligence. We’re excited to bring these benefits to our customers by integrating Rockset’s foundation into OpenAI products,” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI COO.Venkat Venkataramani, CEO of Rockset, also expressed enthusiasm about the acquisition, stating, “We’re excited to be joining OpenAI to empower users, enterprises, and developers to fully leverage their data by bringing powerful retrieval to AI.”What This MeansThis acquisition signifies OpenAI's commitment to enhancing its AI capabilities by bolstering its data infrastructure. It suggests a strategic focus on providing users with more immediate access to data insights, which is crucial for the development and deployment of AI applications. The integration of Rockset's technology is expected to significantly improve the performance and utility of OpenAI's products, potentially giving them a competitive edge in the AI market.As OpenAI continues to integrate Rockset's capabilities, it will be interesting to observe how this acquisition impacts the broader AI landscape and the company's future product offerings.

OpenAI Acquires Global Illumination to Strengthen AI Core Products

On August 16, 2023, OpenAI announced the acquisition of Global Illumination, a company known for leveraging AI to build creative tools, infrastructure, and digital experiences. This acquisition marks a significant step for OpenAI as the entire Global Illumination team joins them to work on core products, including the popular ChatGPT.Global Illumination's Impressive BackgroundFounded by Thomas Dimson, Taylor Gordon, and Joey Flynn, Global Illumination boasts a team with a rich history of designing and building products at major companies such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Pixar, Riot Games, and more. Their expertise and experience are expected to have a substantial impact on OpenAI's product development and innovation.The integration of Global Illumination's team into OpenAI signifies a strategic move to bolster the company's core offerings. With their background in creating digital experiences and infrastructure, they are poised to contribute significantly to the enhancement of ChatGPT and other AI products. This acquisition is likely to accelerate OpenAI's growth and improve the capabilities of their AI technologies.The acquisition of Global Illumination by OpenAI could have far-reaching implications for the AI industry. It demonstrates OpenAI's commitment to expanding their expertise and capabilities, which may lead to more advanced AI tools and services. The move also highlights the ongoing trend of AI companies acquiring specialized teams to gain a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.'We’re very excited for the impact they’ll have here at OpenAI.' - OpenAIOpenAI's acquisition of Global Illumination is a strategic investment in talent and expertise. It underscores the company's dedication to advancing AI technologies and creating cutting-edge products. As the Global Illumination team joins forces with OpenAI, the AI community eagerly anticipates the innovations that will emerge from this collaboration.