OpenAI misses revenue and user growth targets ahead of IPO

OpenAI has missed its ain targets for gross and caller users, raising interest wrong the institution astir whether it tin prolong its sprawling information halfway commitments, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Revenue maturation that fails to prime up velocity could permission OpenAI without the means to grant aboriginal computing contracts, CFO Sarah Friar has told colleagues, The Journal reported. Members of the committee person taken a harder look astatine OpenAI's information halfway agreements and raised doubts astir Altman's thrust to get inactive much computing powerfulness adjacent arsenic maturation slows, the outlet added.

OpenAI and Friar pushed backmost connected the report. "We are wholly aligned connected buying arsenic overmuch compute arsenic we tin and moving hard connected it unneurotic each day," the 2 said successful a associated connection to CNBC. Any proposition that the brace were divided oregon pulling backmost connected computing resources was "ridiculous," they said.

An interior milestone of 1 cardinal play progressive ChatGPT users by year's extremity went unmet, The Journal reported. ChatGPT's yearly gross people besides slipped retired of scope arsenic Google's Gemini surged precocious successful the twelvemonth and claimed a bigger portion of the market; separately, Anthropic's gains successful coding and endeavor pushed OpenAI beneath its monthly gross goals connected respective occasions earlier this year. OpenAI has besides faced subscriber defection rates, the outlet reported.

The spending scrutiny complicates Altman's ambitions up of a imaginable IPO by the extremity of the year. Separately, Friar has raised doubts astir OpenAI's readiness to spell nationalist connected Altman's preferred schedule, telling executives and committee members that the institution inactive lacks the fiscal infrastructure that public-market regulators demand, The Journal reported.

Stock successful companies tied to OpenAI's infrastructure fell connected the report. Oracle banal dropped much than 6%. Nvidia, Broadcom, and Advanced Micro Devices banal each fell betwixt astir 3% and 5%. SoftBank Group banal sank astir 10% successful Asia.

OpenAI closed a $122 cardinal backing circular astatine a post-money valuation of $852 cardinal — the largest successful Silicon Valley history, the institution said. The circular was anchored by SoftBank, Amazon, and Nvidia, among others. At the clip of the raise, OpenAI reported monthly gross of $2 cardinal and full-year 2025 gross of $13.1 billion, though the institution had not turned a profit.

The Journal pointed to immoderate agleam spots: Codex, OpenAI's coding tool, has been gaining users, and GPT-5.5 earned apical marks crossed respective manufacture benchmarks aft its caller release.