OpenAI's CFO Says ChatGPT's Consumer Subscriptions Are The Key Contributor To OpenAI's Revenue Growth

OpenAI's Chief Financial Officer, Sarah Friar, stated on Monday that the majority of the company's revenue comes from consumers who pay for its products, even as the artificial intelligence startup competes for more enterprise customers in a crowded market.

In her latest interview, she mentioned that about 75% of OpenAI's business comes from consumer subscriptions. The company's chatbot, ChatGPT, currently starts at a monthly fee of $20 for consumer payment plans.

Friar said, We have been wowed at just the pace of growth, particularly on the consumer side. Even though our enterprise businesses, are young, they are already doing an incredible amount of annualized revenue. We're really excited by the potential there.

Friar's comments imply the strength of OpenAI's consumer business. She stated that ChatGPT currently has 250 million active users per week, and the company is converting free users to paid product users at a rate of 5%-6%.

At the same time, like other AI companies, OpenAI has been working to increase revenue by attracting enterprise users. OpenAI announced in September that its paid enterprise users of ChatGPT have reached 1 million, indicating that the demand for its chatbot is still growing. This number was 600,000 in April.

OpenAI launched the enterprise version of ChatGPT with additional features and privacy protection a year ago, hoping to increase revenue and offset the high costs of developing AI products. In January, the company introduced the ChatGPT Team to small companies. Although OpenAI's paid enterprise users have increased significantly this year, it is unclear how many new enterprises have registered.

OpenAI stated that nearly half of its enterprise users are located in the United States.

However, despite OpenAI's rapid revenue growth, developing and operating more advanced AI systems also brings significant expenses. Earlier this month, OpenAI completed a funding round of $6.6 billion and applied for a $4 billion revolving credit facility from global banks.

Friar said, What's most important to us is to stay on the frontier: building the frontier models, making sure that we are bringing, ultimately, AGI to the benefit of humanity. AGI refers to artificial intelligence that can match or surpass human performance on a variety of intellectual tasks.

As part of this effort, OpenAI has been working to form a global alliance to support investment in the physical infrastructure required for artificial intelligence. This includes advocating for the construction of an unprecedented data center in the United States, with facilities capable of generating up to 5 gigawatts of power.

It's new territory, Friar said when talking about the company's infrastructure plans, Frankly, I think we're all learning in this space: Infrastructure is destiny.