San Francisco, January 20, 2026, 06:48 PST
- OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar revealed the company’s annualized revenue hit over $20 billion in 2025, jumping from $6 billion the previous year.
- Friar linked the surge to computing capacity, which is expected to climb from 0.6 gigawatts in 2024 to roughly 1.9 gigawatts in 2025.
- ServiceNow announced that OpenAI models, including GPT-5.2, will be the preferred choice for enterprises managing over 80 billion workflows annually on its platform.
OpenAI announced its annualized revenue topped $20 billion in 2025, more than tripling compared to the previous year, driven by increased computing power for training and operating its models. CFO Sarah Friar revealed the numbers in a blog post. (Reuters)
The figure represents a run-rate, not a prediction — it annualizes recent revenue in a cash-heavy business investing in chips, data centers, and power. Friar noted that OpenAI’s compute demand jumped from 0.2 gigawatts in 2023 to roughly 1.9 gigawatts by 2025, with annual recurring revenue soaring from $2 billion to more than $20 billion in that timeframe. (OpenAI)
OpenAI aims to prove that it can convert initial interest into consistent, paid usage. Friar described 2026 as a year focused on “practical adoption,” highlighting the next step as “agents”—software capable of maintaining context and performing actions across multiple tools, not just delivering answers. The emphasis will be on health, science, and enterprise sectors. According to Business Insider, business spending tracked by Ramp hit a record in December, surpassing competitors like Anthropic and Google. (Business Insider)
OpenAI has ramped up its monetization efforts. Last week, it announced plans to introduce ads in ChatGPT for some users in the U.S., aiming to offset the expenses of developing the technology. (The Business Times)
On Tuesday, ServiceNow announced a multi-year deal naming OpenAI models as their “preferred intelligence capability” for enterprise clients. “Deploying AI that takes end-to-end action in complex enterprise environments — not sandboxes,” said ServiceNow president and COO Amit Zavery in the announcement. (ServiceNow Newsroom)
OpenAI’s COO Brad Lightcap described the partnership as a push to integrate “agentic AI” into secure, scalable workflows — tech-speak for AI that can plan and execute tasks within business software. The two firms revealed that OpenAI’s models, including GPT-5.2, will be woven into ServiceNow’s AI platform to drive decision-making and trigger actions inside enterprise systems. (OpenAI)
OpenAI isn’t just focused on software. Chris Lehane, the company’s chief global affairs officer, told Axios at Davos that they’re “on track” to release their first device in the latter half of 2026, though he wouldn’t share any details. (Axios)
The revenue figure alone doesn’t answer the profit puzzle, as costs remain the lurking issue. Investor Paul Kedrosky dismissed the blog post, calling it “successfully selling dollars for $0.70 in huge volume.” His jab questions if the math holds once compute expenses and deal costs are factored in. (Paulkedrosky)
