OpenAI has failed to meet its recent internal goals for both new user additions and revenue, prompting concern among some senior executives about whether the company can sustain its significant data-center and compute commitments if top-line growth does not accelerate, according to people familiar with the situation.
At the center of the debate is the companys spending on computing capacity. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has told other leaders she is worried that, absent stronger revenue growth, OpenAI may not be able to finance future computing contracts needed to support its operations and expansion plans.
Company performance slipped in several areas earlier this year. OpenAI missed multiple monthly revenue targets after losing ground to Anthropic in coding and enterprise markets, the people said. That commercial pressure coincided with a slowdown in ChatGPTs user growth late last year, and the company did not meet an internal objective to reach 1 billion weekly active users for its chatbot by year-end.
The business has also seen subscriber defections, a dynamic that has contributed to the revenue shortfall. Executives have been assessing the implications of weaker subscriber trends for future recurring revenue and the pacing of compute purchases tied to product demand.
In response to the reporting, CEO and co-founder Sam Altman and Friar issued an emailed statement defending the companys approach. "This is ridiculous. We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day," they said.
The situation has prompted internal discussion about balancing aggressive investment in data-center capacity with the company's ability to fund that investment through revenue streams that have so far underperformed internal targets. The companys leadership appears to be weighing the trade-offs between continuing to scale compute aggressively and the financial constraints that slower-than-expected revenue could impose.
Context limitations: The available information describes missed user and revenue targets, concerns voiced by the CFO about financing compute contracts, competitive losses to Anthropic in certain markets, a slowdown in ChatGPTs user growth, and subscriber defections. Details on specific revenue shortfalls, contract sizes, or timing of any corrective actions were not provided.