OpenAI Projects $1250 Billion Revenue by 2029, AI Agents to Drive 24% Growth

OpenAI has projected that its total revenue will reach $1250 billion by 2029, with AI agents serving as the primary growth driver. The company anticipates that its agent business will account for nearly a quarter of its total revenue, while channel revenue will make up about a fifth. By 2029, the agent business is expected to generate $290 billion in revenue, and channel revenue is projected to reach $250 billion. Through effective cost management, OpenAI aims to achieve positive cash flow by 2029, with a gross profit margin of 70%.

With the rapid expansion of its AI agent business and new product lines, OpenAI has presented investors with an optimistic growth outlook. The company expects its total revenue to reach $1250 billion by 2029 and further increase to $1740 billion by 2030. Although ChatGPT has been a significant revenue generator for OpenAI over the past two years, the company predicts that by 2029, the sales of AI agents and other new products will surpass those of its popular chatbot. In 2023, OpenAI's revenue reached $37 billion, a nearly fourfold increase from the previous year. Currently, OpenAI has over 500 million weekly active users, a significant increase from 300 million in December of the previous year.

OpenAI forecasts that its AI agent business will generate $290 billion in revenue by 2029, far exceeding the $30 billion expected for this year. These agent products are priced at a premium, ranging from $2000 per month for high-income knowledge workers to $20,000 per month for doctoral-level research. These figures suggest that the 10-year-old company's sales will approach the levels of current industry giants like NVIDIA or Meta, reflecting the rapid growth of the AI agent business. OpenAI has also secured several high-profile clients. In February, SoftBank announced an annual investment of $30 billion in OpenAI products, including AI agents, and plans to establish a joint venture to promote OpenAI's products in Japan under the brand name Cristal Intelligence. Overall, OpenAI predicts that its agent business will account for nearly a quarter of its total revenue over the next five years.

OpenAI is exploring multiple revenue streams beyond traditional subscription fees. While CEO Sam Altman has expressed caution about placing traditional ads on chatbots, he mentioned the possibility of charging promotion fees—taking a cut from sales initiated by users through ChatGPT or its agents. OpenAI is expected to generate significant revenue from free users and other products starting next year. By 2029, revenue from these channels is projected to reach $250 billion, accounting for about a fifth of the total revenue. OpenAI has already begun experimenting in the shopping sector. Since January, some users have been able to use the web browsing agent Operator through a ChatGPT Professional subscription to order groceries on Instacart or make restaurant reservations on OpenTable. This strategy is similar to Google's approach of monetizing its AI Overview feature by displaying ads to mobile device users in the United States.

OpenAI anticipates that over the next four years, it will spend approximately $460 billion on model training, operational costs, and employee salaries. However, the company expects to achieve positive cash flow by 2029, generating nearly $120 billion in cash for that year. Notably, the growth in reasoning costs—the expenses associated with running AI products like ChatGPT—is expected to slow down over the next five years. These costs are projected to increase to around $60 billion this year and reach nearly $470 billion by 2030, but the annual growth rate is expected to decrease to about 30%. The costs for developers using OpenAI models are decreasing due to improvements in model efficiency and new technologies like prompt caching. This slowdown in cost growth, combined with the surge in revenue, is expected to significantly boost OpenAI's profit margins. The company projects that its gross profit margin will rise from 40% last year to nearly 70% by 2029. OpenAI also expects a substantial increase in user numbers, with 30 billion monthly active users, 20 billion weekly active users, and 9 billion daily active users by 2030. As of the end of last year, fewer than 5% of ChatGPT's weekly active users were paying subscribers.

Regardless of whether these projections materialize, the optimistic data suggests why investors, led by SoftBank, are willing to inject $400 billion in new capital into OpenAI at a $2600 billion valuation—an increase of 73% from the previous autumn's valuation.