OpenAI is set to hit a major user milestone, reaching 700 million weekly active users. That is up 40% from 500 million at the end of March and about four times the number from the same period last year. The company says it now handles about 2.5 billion prompts each day from around 330 million individual users.
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The growth comes alongside a large funding boost. OpenAI recently completed an $8.3 billion funding round at a $300 billion valuation, months ahead of schedule. The round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, which invested $2.8 billion. Other new investors include Blackstone, TPG, and T. Rowe Price, while Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital returned. This raise is part of OpenAI’s plan to secure $40 billion in 2025. The company raised $2.5 billion in March.
OpenAI’s annualized revenue is about $13 billion and could reach $20 billion by the end of the year if current trends hold. The funding is expected to support product development and expand its reach into more business and consumer markets.
Growth Is Evident, But Costs and Competition Mount
Feature updates are also playing a role in the growth. The ChatGPT Projects tool has been expanded with more research features, voice mode, and a memory system that can recall past conversations inside projects. These changes are making it easier for users to manage longer and more complex work inside the platform. OpenAI now counts more than 5 million paying business subscribers, up from 3 million in June. However, the company faces financial and competitive challenges as it expects to burn about $8 billion in cash by the end of 2025.
Current projections suggest it will not reach cash-flow breakeven before 2029. Also, competition from Google DeepMind (GOOG), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT)-backed AI projects is also increasing. Moreover, China-based companies are also threatening American companies’ AI dominance, such as Alibaba’s Qwen 3, and DeepSeek’s R1 model.
In short, OpenAI’s combination of rapid user growth, higher revenue, and heavy investment is impressive and even formidable. Still, retail investors will be watching to see if the company can sustain this pace while managing costs and defending its position in a fast-growing market.
Using TipRanks’ Comparison Tool, we’ve compared some of the notable companies that employ ChatGPT similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
