OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate has crossed the $40 billion mark, a figure confirmed by CNBC after Bloomberg first reported it, as the company's enterprise business overtook its ChatGPT-led consumer operation for the first time.
The milestone was disclosed to existing shareholders at an investor meeting on Friday led by Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar, according to CNBC. The meeting had been scheduled before a turbulent week of executive departures, and it offered the most detailed financial picture yet of a company racing toward a long-expected public listing. The scale of the growth underscores how quickly commercial spending on AI is compounding — a trend we track daily in our AI industry coverage at AI Buzz Wire.
Enterprise Overtakes Consumer Ahead of Schedule
The most striking revelation from the meeting: OpenAI's business-to-business operation now generates more revenue than its consumer business, which had been the company's growth engine since ChatGPT launched.
"We entered the year at 60-40, but enterprise has accelerated much faster than expected and those lines have now crossed," Friar said, according to a person who attended the meeting and asked not to be named due to confidentiality. "The majority of our revenue is now enterprise."
The crossover puts OpenAI ahead of its own forecast. Friar had previously told CNBC that the company expected the two businesses to reach parity only by the end of 2026.
The pace of growth is rapid by any measure. According to slides viewed by CNBC, OpenAI's run rate increased 20 percent month over month in July, while the number of business customers grew 32 percent over the same period.
A $40 Billion Milestone After a Week of Executive Turmoil
The investor meeting closed out one of the most chaotic weeks in OpenAI's commercial leadership history. Revenue chief Denise Dresser stepped down the day before the meeting, just eight months into the job. Dresser, who spent more than a decade at Salesforce and was most recently CEO of Slack, said in a LinkedIn post that she was leaving to pursue other opportunities.
Two days earlier, longtime operating chief Brad Lightcap announced he would end an eight-year stint at the ChatGPT maker to "start something new."
President and co-founder Greg Brockman also attended Friday's meeting. He thanked Dresser for her contributions and for building the enterprise foundation, and expressed confidence in her replacement, Dali Rajic, who was operating chief at cybersecurity firm Wiz, now owned by Google. According to CNBC, Rajic was introduced to OpenAI through Thrive founder Josh Kushner.
Despite the departures, CNBC reported that analysts view the revenue momentum as strengthening the case for an IPO — even as some flagged the executive churn as a risk factor.
From 'Tokenmaxxing' to Cost Per Unit of Intelligence
Friar told investors that enterprise customer behavior has fundamentally shifted over the past year. The era of "tokenmaxxing" — companies allowing employees to rack up enormous AI bills without demonstrating measurable output — is over.
"Enterprise customers have moved from tokenmaxxing to focusing on cost per unit of intelligence," Friar said, according to the person at the meeting.
She pointed to efficiency gains as a key lever, noting that OpenAI's newest model is 54 percent more efficient on agentic coding tasks, alongside recent price reductions across the company's model suite.
Advertising is also emerging as a meaningful revenue stream for the company. Friar said OpenAI has "made great strides" in advertising, with the business approaching a $1 billion run rate. The company began testing ads inside ChatGPT in February.
The IPO Question Looms
Investors at the meeting pressed executives on the timing of an initial public offering, but were told the company could not discuss it because of a confidential filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The $40 billion run rate roughly doubles the figure OpenAI recorded at the close of 2025, when Friar said the company finished the year with more than $20 billion in annualized revenue. A run rate annualizes recent performance, so the number reflects where the business stands today rather than what it booked over a full trailing year — for a company that was a research lab only a few years ago, the trajectory is unprecedented.
The company's core consumer operation also continues to expand, according to reports on the investor materials, even as enterprise takes the lead. And the growth comes despite the executive churn: CNBC's own analysis this week described the talent exodus as a "huge red flag" ahead of the IPO, a tension the company will have to resolve as it courts public-market investors.
Executives also fielded questions about the rise of open-source Chinese models. Brockman brushed off the competitive threat, telling attendees there is a misunderstanding around open source being cheaper, according to the person in attendance.
The numbers arrive in the same week that rival Anthropic reported to its own prospective investors a preliminary second-quarter revenue figure of more than $11.5 billion — evidence that the two leading US AI labs are scaling at a pace with few precedents in the history of enterprise software.
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