OpenAI generated nearly $6 billion in first-quarter revenue, a sign that demand for artificial intelligence tools is still rising even as the cost of competing at the top of the AI market remains enormous.
The company brought in about $5.7 billion in revenue during the first quarter, The Information reported Thursday (May 21), citing two people with knowledge of the company’s financials. That was nearly $1 billion more than Anthropic generated during the same period. OpenAI’s coding agent Codex, business sales and tests of advertising on ChatGPT helped drive the quarter, according to the report.
The numbers show how quickly OpenAI is turning AI usage into revenue. They also show how the business is shifting. ChatGPT remains the company’s consumer anchor, but Codex and enterprise AI are becoming more important growth engines. The Information reported that OpenAI’s first-quarter results suggest the company remains on pace to meet its earlier goal of $30 billion in revenue this year.
But the report also points to the pressure behind that growth. The Information said OpenAI told investors its adjusted operating income margin was negative 122% in the first quarter. Put more simply, the company lost $1.22 for every dollar of revenue, even after excluding some items such as stock-based compensation. The report said the company’s data showed it was “still operating deeply in the red.”
OpenAI also faces a usage challenge. The company averaged about 905 million weekly active users during the quarter, according to The Information. It had reached about 920 million weekly active users in February, but the lower quarterly average suggests softer usage during other parts of the quarter. ChatGPT had 55 million paying consumer subscribers in the first quarter, up from about 47 million at the end of last year.
The broader implication is that the AI market is moving from product excitement to business-model scrutiny. OpenAI is growing fast, but Anthropic’s momentum, enterprise adoption and possible IPO plans are turning the race into a contest over revenue quality, margins and capital access. OpenAI has raised massive funding and is pushing into coding, ads, enterprise products and consumer subscriptions. The harder task now is proving those channels can support the cost of AI infrastructure.
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PYMNTS has tracked that shift across several recent OpenAI stories. In March, PYMNTS reported that OpenAI raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, with Codex and enterprise revenue central to the pitch. PYMNTS later covered how Codex demand sparked a new mid-tier subscription and how OpenAI began offering cost-per-click ad campaigns on ChatGPT. More recently, PYMNTS reported that OpenAI tapped Plaid to connect financial accounts to ChatGPT, showing how the company is trying to turn ChatGPT from a chatbot into a broader commercial platform.
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