OpenAI Half-Year Revenue Jumps 16% to $4.3 Billion

OpenAI reportedly recorded roughly $4.3 billion in revenue for the first half of 2025.

That’s a 16% increase over last year, The Information reported late Monday (Sept. 29), citing disclosures from the artificial intelligence (AI) startup to its shareholders.

The report notes that OpenAI’s cash burn rate for the half year came to $2.5 billion, chiefly related to research and development expenses, such as the costs tied to building advanced AI models and running ChatGPT.

PYMNTS has contacted OpenAI for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

The company spent $6.7 billion on research and development during the period, the report said, and had close to $17.5 billion in cash and securities after the first six months of the year.

OpenAI is targeting a full-year revenue goal of $13 billion, with a cash-burn rate of $8.5 billion, The Information report said.

Citing an unnamed source, the news outlet had reported in July that OpenAI had logged revenues of $12 billion for the first seven months of 2025, a figure which implies the company is generating $1 billion per month in revenue.

Last week saw the news that OpenAI was searching for someone to oversee its monetization efforts, a job that would include leading a team responsible for bringing ads to ChatGPT.

The company this week launched another revenue generation effort with the addition of a new eCommerce component to ChatGPT called “Instant Checkout.” This service lets ChatGPT users in the U.S. make purchases from U.S.-based Etsy merchants, plus some sellers on Shopify.

“This marks the next step in agentic commerce, where ChatGPT doesn’t just help you find what to buy, it also helps you buy it,” the company said in a news release. “For shoppers, it’s seamless: go from chat to checkout in just a few taps. For sellers, it’s a new way to reach hundreds of millions of people while keeping full control of their payments, systems and customer relationships.”

PYMNTS tested the new feature Monday soon after the launch, with that report noting that Instant Checkout represents a huge step in the convergence of discovery and payments.

“Rather than presenting a sea of links, ChatGPT surfaces a curated few,” the report said. “Visibility now shifts from search engine optimization and marketplace ads to AI optimization, structuring product and metadata to align with agent ranking logic.”