By the end of 2025, OpenAI achieved an ARR of over $20 billion, up from $6 billion in 2024 and $2 billion in 2023. ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) represents the annualized value of recurring subscription and contract revenues, typically excluding one-time payments.

We have added more than $1B of ARR in the last month just from our API business.
We have added more than $1B of ARR in the last month just from our API business, X

The roughly $1 billion ARR increase in a single month, reported by Altman on X, corresponds to about 5% of OpenAI’s total ARR. Importantly, this does not indicate the share of revenue generated by API customers, but rather reflects additional growth. The exact proportion of total ARR attributable to APIs remains unclear.

At the same time, OpenAI faces commitments of around $1.4 trillion for computing infrastructure in the coming years. As a result, the company is preparing to introduce advertising in ChatGPT, despite Altman previously calling ads a “last resort.” In May 2024, he stated at a Harvard event: “Advertising plus AI is somehow particularly disturbing to me.” Initially, ads will appear for free users and within the new ChatGPT Go subscription plan.