OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the Hope Global Forum Annual Meeting in Atlanta on December 11, 2023.
Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, expects losses to be around $5 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion this year, CNBC confirmed.
The company generated $300 million in revenue last month, an increase of 1,700% since the beginning of last year, and expects sales of $11.6 billion next year, according to a person close to OpenAI, who requested anonymity because the numbers are confidential. That’s what it means. .
new york times It first reported on OpenAI’s financials early Friday after viewing the company’s documents. CNBC has not seen the financials.
Microsoft-backed OpenAI is currently in the midst of a funding round that values ​​the company at more than $150 billion, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. Thrive Capital led the round with a planned $1 billion investment, with Tiger Global also expected to participate.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told investors in an email Thursday that the funding round is oversubscribed and will close by next week. Her memo followed a number of key departures, including head of technology Mira Murati, who announced the day before that she was leaving OpenAI after six and a half years.
Also this week, news emerged that OpenAI’s board of directors is considering plans to restructure the company into a for-profit business. The company will maintain its nonprofit division as a separate entity, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The structure will be easier to understand for investors and make it easier for OpenAI employees to achieve liquidity, the people said.
OpenAI’s services have exploded in popularity since the company launched ChatGPT in late 2022. The company sells subscriptions to a variety of tools and licenses to the GPT family of large-scale language models that are powering much of the generative AI boom. Running these models requires huge investments. Nvidia’s Graphics processing unit.
Citing an analysis by financial experts who reviewed OpenAI’s documents, the Times reported that this year’s losses of about $5 billion are related to the cost of operating the service, as well as employee salaries and office rent. The costs do not include stock-based compensation “among several significant costs that are not fully accounted for in documentation,” the newspaper said.
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