OpenAI CFO Says Company Hits Core Targets Despite Stretch Goals

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said Thursday (April 30) that the company is meeting its objectives.

Interviewed by Bloomberg for a report published Thursday, Friar said that if anything is slowing OpenAI down at all, it’s not a lack of demand, but a lack of compute.

Friar’s remarks came three days after the Wall Street Journal reported Monday (April 27) that OpenAI had fallen short of its internal goals for new users and revenue and that some of the company’s executives, including Friar, were concerned about whether the firm would be able to fund its data center plans if its revenue didn’t grow quickly enough.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday (April 28) that OpenAI described the WSJ report as “prime clickbait” and that the company said its consumer and enterprise businesses are “firing on all cylinders” and “the mood internally is incredibly positive.”

Friar told Bloomberg Thursday that OpenAI may have internal “stretch goals” that are more ambitious than its publicly shared goals, but that demand for the company’s products continues to grow.

“Every company I’ve ever been inside of in my entire CFO life, and as an analyst, always has stretch goals — always,” Friar said, per the report.

The Information reported that OpenAI is projecting a giant shift in subscription revenue but still sees revenues more than doubling to $30 billion this year and reaching $284 billion in 2030.

The report said that while OpenAI has pulled in the bulk of its revenue from consumers’ $20-per-month ChatGPT subscriptions over the last three years, the company now expects that a cheaper, ad-supported subscription tier will attract new users but also lead existing subscribers to downgrade. The company hopes to generate more revenue by selling ads to more users than depending on its existing flagship monthly subscription service, ChatGPT Plus.

It was reported April 9 that OpenAI expects its nascent advertising business to generate $2.5 billion in revenue this year and surge to $100 billion by the end of the decade. The report said the company’s projections underscore its push to monetize its user base to help fund the soaring costs of developing its AI technology.