OpenAI's annual revenue is $1.3 billion, with a 30% increase compared to the summer.

Since the popularity of ChatGPT, every move made by OpenAI has become a barometer of the AI industry, as it represents the overall demand in the field.

According to the latest reports from insiders, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman informed employees this week that the company's revenue has reached an annualized $1.3 billion. This means that OpenAI's monthly revenue currently exceeds $100 million, which is 30% higher than the annualized revenue of $1 billion in the summer of this year. In stark contrast, the company's revenue for the entire year of last year was only $28 million.

OpenAI's revenue mainly comes from subscriptions to its chatbot. The company launched a paid version of ChatGPT in February this year, which has led to rapid revenue growth. OpenAI's revenue also includes sales revenue from the computational power that powers its AI. The computational power runs on Microsoft's cloud servers, and it is currently unclear how much revenue OpenAI generates from it.

Insiders also revealed that OpenAI plans to announce improvements to ChatGPT and other features that enhance large language models at a customer event scheduled for early next month. There are reports that OpenAI will also release a product to reduce the cost of using its AI.

The revenue growth of OpenAI helps to increase the company's valuation. Currently, the company is organizing a round of tender offers, giving external investors the opportunity to purchase shares from some employees. This is the second similar tender offer held by OpenAI this year. It has been reported that OpenAI employees may attempt to sell their shares at a company valuation of $80 billion or higher.

Earlier reports stated that Altman himself hinted privately that the company may attempt to raise as much as $100 billion in funding in the coming years to achieve OpenAI's ambitious goals. This far exceeds Microsoft's promised investment of over $10 billion. It is expected that in addition to the ongoing tender offer for shares held by internal employees, OpenAI will raise another large sum of money as early as this year.

Currently, it is unclear what OpenAI's development costs are for this year. Last year, OpenAI recorded a loss of $540 million.

Currently, both large companies and startups are facing the pressing issue of high costs in developing or using large language models. For example, Microsoft's AI programming assistant, Github Copilot, charges $10 per person per month, but there are reports that this feature results in a loss of over $20 per user per month, with some users even causing losses exceeding $80 per month. This has prompted both Google and Microsoft to seek cost reductions in this area.

It should be noted that although the latest news shows that OpenAI's revenue is still growing significantly, the growth rate is slowing down according to some indicators:

• According to market intelligence company Appfigures, in the just-concluded September, the global downloads of ChatGPT iOS and Android applications reached a record-breaking 15.6 million times, with total revenue reaching $4.58 million. However, this growth has started to slow down.
• In order to gain more "privileges" with ChatGPT, users need to pay OpenAI $19.99 per month, which brought in $2.74 million and $3.81 million in revenue for OpenAI in July and August, corresponding to growth rates of 31% and 39%. However, the growth rate in September was only 20%.

Recently, a Wall Street News website article mentioned that Sequoia Capital stated that the biggest problem faced by generative AI is not finding use cases or demand, but the inability to prove its value to users.