- OpenAI missed internal targets for weekly active users and annual revenue for ChatGPT, raising financial concerns internally.
- CFO Sarah Friar warned that revenue might not grow fast enough to cover future computing contracts, which total roughly $600 billion in spending.
- On prediction market Myriad, users place a 64% chance on Anthropic conducting its IPO before OpenAI.
OpenAI is confronting a critical gap between its ambitions and its financial reality, according to experts, after the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the company missed key internal targets for ChatGPT. The company fell short of its goal to reach one billion weekly active users by the end of last year, a milestone it never announced.
CFO Sarah Friar privately warned other leaders that revenue may not grow fast enough to cover the company’s massive future compute contracts. Consequently, board directors have reportedly grown more probing about these data-center deals, questioning why CEO Sam Altman continues to pursue more capacity.
Meanwhile, Anthropic has quietly overtaken OpenAI on the share trading platform Forge Global. It now trades at roughly $1 trillion against OpenAI‘s approximately $880 billion valuation, marking the first time its rival has commanded a higher implied valuation.
Experts are divided on whether these stumbles signal a broader market correction. Alice Li, Investment Partner at Foresight Ventures, said, “When the dust settles, I think companies will find out something they already knew—a lot of the work still depends on human judgment, collaboration, and contextual understanding that AI can’t yet replicate.” She frames the current pressure as an internal tech-sector rebalancing.
Markus Levin, co-founder of Depin network XYO, argued that conflating a slow adoption curve with an imminent market reckoning reflects tunnel vision. He noted that by the end of 2025, roughly 84% of the world’s working-age population had still not used generative AI tools.
Pavel Bezhin, CFO at AI development company Napoleon IT, pointed to the dot-com crash as the relevant lesson. He stated, “If global financial institutions have learned the right lessons from the dot-com crash, discussions about recession and systemic collapse will remain nothing more than cautionary tales.”
OpenAI‘s IPO ambitions are caught in this turmoil, with Altman pushing for a public listing by year-end while Friar has cautioned that internal controls are not yet built for public market standards. Away from finance, Altman spent last week apologizing to a community after OpenAI acknowledged it banned a ChatGPT account tied to a mass shooting suspect without ever notifying law enforcement.
✅ Follow BITNEWSBOT on Telegram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X.com, and Google News for instant updates.
