- OpenAI hit $10 billion in annualized revenue on Monday, almost doubling its 2024 ARR in six months. Investor Mark Cuban believes the ChatGPT creator’s massive sales growth reflects its standout brand in a crowded start-up market.
Mark Cuban is bullish on ChatGPT.
The chatbot’s creator, OpenAI, said its annual recurring revenue reached $10 billion on Monday, almost doubling its $5.5 billion in ARR last year. While whispers of a potential IPO ripple through the investor community, AI advocate and investment luminary Cuban said he prefers the chatbot over competitors like Gemini and Claude, which he also uses.
“This is still a race in the first inning, but ChatGPT has done the best job of building a brand, and it shows in their sales,” he told Fortune in an email.
The San Francisco startup said its $10 billion figure includes ChatGPT business products, consumer products, and its application programming interface, or API.
“(OpenAI) earned every penny of it,” Cuban said of the company’s revenue landmark.
ChatGPT became the fastest-adopted app in history when it launched in 2023, gaining a million users in five days. OpenAI now supports 500 million weekly active users, it said in late March.
The company announced earlier this month that it has 3 million paying business users, a 50% increase from the 2 million it reported in February. Customers of ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Team and ChatGPT Edu, which are all workplace-specific versions of the chatbot with separate subscription tiers, comprise the 3 million users.
But the company’s growth hasn’t been profitable. OpenAI lost about $5 billion last year.
Still, the company forecasts continued growth, and targeted $125 billion in revenue by 2029, The Information reported in April.
OpenAI closed a $40 billion funding round in March, penning the largest private tech deal on record—its valuation now 30 times its annualized revenue.
In early October 2024, OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round that Cuban could’ve contributed to, the former principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks revealed during an appearance on the “All-In” podcast.
Cuban told FortuneGoogle Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity AI are some of the chatbots he uses, noting he uses ChatGPT daily. The Information recently reported that ‘AI native’ companies’—businesses fundamentally built around AI—annualized revenue have seen exponential sales in 2025, but OpenAI has taken the lion’s share, accounting for over two-thirds of revenue.
Anthropic hit $3 billion in annualized revenue in May, tripling its $1 billion figure from December 2024. The company said it’s on track to become profitable in 2027.
OpenAI’s massive growth is a testament to “just how explosive the (AI) market is,” Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney said.
But, if he were to guess, he said it’s likely the company doubled its losses along with its annualized revenue.
But Cuban is now a believer, having experienced the growth of OpenAI’s influence firsthand.
“I often ask the question at talks and panels, ‘how many of you use ChatGPT.’ The responses have gone from just a few a year ago, to pretty much all but (two) people in a large room,” Cuban said.