The Symbol of the AI Revolution: OpenAI Breaks Through the $12 Billion Barrier - The Dilemma of Funding and Deficits

Introduction

"Where is the dominance of generative AI heading?" OpenAI has once again answered this question with striking figures. According to a Reuters report dated July 30, 2025, the company's annualized revenue has skyrocketed to $12 billion, doubling from the $5 billion scale at the beginning of the year in just seven months. On a monthly basis, this translates to $1 billion in earnings.Reuters

Staggering User Numbers

The surge in revenue is supported by the "explosive increase in users" of ChatGPT. Weekly active users (WAU) number 700 million, meaning about 9% of the world's population interacts with the chatbot weekly. The corporate API and Enterprise plans are also performing well, with over 70% of the Fortune 500 reportedly incorporating OpenAI's models in some form.

Capital Strategy: The Second Act of Raising $30 Billion

However, the generative AI business, which requires massive computational resources, is also an "industry that burns money." The recent report highlighted an upward revision of the cash burn forecast for 2025 to $8 billion. The main cost drivers include the purchase of NVIDIA H200 and B100 class GPUs, the construction of dedicated data centers in the U.S., and a shift to renting Google Cloud TPUs.
To cover these expenses, OpenAI is advancing a $30 billion round in two stages. The first half of $15 billion closed at the beginning of the year, with Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global expected to participate in the latter half with investments of several hundred million dollars. SoftBank is projected to reach $32 billion in total from the fall of 2024.Reuters

Enthusiasm and Skepticism on Social Media

• On **Twitter (X)**, while some influencers praise the company as "a money-printing machine earning $23,000 every minute," others sarcastically comment that "it's only a matter of time before they fall into the red due to electricity and GPU costs."

• Reddit /r/singularity features a thread estimating that "less than 1% of the 700 million WAU convert to paid users," sparking discussions on the sustainability of the subscription model.Reddit

• On LinkedIn, a partner from a major consulting firm commented that "OpenAI could become the 'fourth cloud,'" emphasizing its presence as a corporate IT infrastructure.

Competitive Environment: Anthropic, DeepSeek, xAI

In the market, Anthropic is expanding corporate contracts with Claude 4.5, China's DeepSeek is gaining market share in Southeast Asia with its R1 model, which boasts inference costs one-tenth of the competition, and xAI, led by Elon Musk, is building Groksphere by exclusively utilizing an estimated 40 billion post data from its acquisition of X. The competition is intensifying.

Challenges: Cost Structure and Regulation

To improve profitability, the keys are seen as 1) developing in-house ASICs, 2) reducing inference costs through multi-cloud utilization, and 3) upselling to high-value plans like ChatGPT Pro+ and Sora Pro. Meanwhile, the costs of complying with regulations such as the EU AI Act and Japan's AI business guidelines cannot be ignored.

Future Outlook

OpenAI has set a goal of achieving "$125 billion in revenue and positive cash flow by 2029." Achieving this requires an average annual CAGR of over 60%, but considering the trend of AI generalization, it is not impossible. However, risks such as the sensitivity of corporate demand to economic conditions, AI chip supply constraints, and competitive price disruptions are real.

Conclusion

From a "research lab" to a "trillion-yen company" in just nine years—OpenAI's growth curve is exceptional even in tech history. However, behind the success lies enormous financial investment and social responsibility. Rather than taking the social media frenzy at face value, understanding the triple challenges of cost, regulation, and competition that the company faces will be key to deciphering the post-generative AI era.

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