OpenAI continues to scale at a breakneck pace, logging its first $1 billion revenue month in July even as the company faces relentless pressure from soaring artificial intelligence compute demands. Speaking Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar emphasized that the company remains “constantly under compute,” highlighting the infrastructural challenges that accompany its rapid growth.
“It is voracious right now for GPUs and for compute,” Friar said. “The biggest thing we face is being constantly under compute. That’s why we launched Stargate. That’s why we’re doing the bigger builds.” The company has been expanding partnerships and infrastructure to meet its compute needs, including collaborations with Oracle and CoreWeave, while continuing a deep relationship with Microsoft. “Microsoft will be an important partner for years to come, and I think we are very intertwined because of our IP,” Friar added. “Remember, Microsoft AI products are built on OpenAI technology.”
The rapid growth in AI demand has coincided with explosive revenue expansion. OpenAI, which first gained widespread attention with ChatGPT in late 2022, is projected to triple revenue this year to approximately $12.7 billion, according to people familiar with the company’s financials. The firm has reported reaching $10 billion in annual recurring revenue and now celebrates hitting the milestone $1 billion monthly mark in July.
This surge in revenue is fueled in part by accelerating subscriptions to OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT-5 models. While the model debuted to some user criticism—particularly regarding temporary removal of previous model access—the company quickly restored functionality for paid subscribers, helping subscription growth continue unabated. Friar noted, “When you have 700 million weekly active users, you start to find people are very opinionated. As we’ve come out of the gate, we’re actually seeing acceleration in Plus and Pro subscriptions.”
CEO Sam Altman has underscored the company’s plans to aggressively scale its infrastructure. Last week, he told CNBC that OpenAI intends to spend trillions on datacenters to accommodate growing demand. “Our bet is, our demand is going to keep growing, our training needs are going to keep going, and we will spend maybe more aggressively than any company who’s ever spent on anything ahead of progress,” Altman said, signaling the company’s commitment to remaining at the forefront of AI innovation.
OpenAI’s market presence has also been bolstered by large funding rounds and private equity deals. In March, the company closed a record $40 billion funding round at a $300 billion valuation, the largest ever for a private tech company. CNBC confirmed earlier this month that OpenAI is exploring a potential $6 billion stock sale at an estimated $500 billion valuation, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s continued growth trajectory.
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5 launch has sparked excitement among enterprise and developer customers, it also highlights the challenges of scaling AI products to hundreds of millions of users. The model significantly increases reasoning workloads—reportedly by eightfold—but OpenAI’s growing subscriber base shows that demand is keeping pace. As Friar noted, the combination of revenue growth, user engagement, and surging infrastructure needs illustrates the company’s unique position in the AI industry.
Even as OpenAI celebrates its first $1 billion month, the firm is facing the dual challenge of meeting unprecedented compute demand while expanding its global footprint. With ambitious plans for data centers, continued collaboration with Microsoft, and growing paid subscriptions, OpenAI appears set to maintain its dominant position in the AI landscape, balancing rapid growth with the operational complexities of scaling next-generation artificial intelligence.
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