OpenAI Expected to Widen Losses: Analysts Highlight AI Model's Role in Driving Business Growth Opportunities

According to the latest financial projections from OpenAI, the company is expected to incur losses of $14 billion by 2026—almost three times the anticipated loss for this year. Importantly, this forecast does not account for stock-based compensation. However, by 2029, OpenAI anticipates generating a profit of $14 billion with total revenue surpassing $100 billion. This indicates that despite the company's impressive $66 billion funding round, which has valued it at $157 billion, it still faces the challenge of annual multi-billion dollar losses and high operational costs in the near future.

The report suggests that if OpenAI can reduce significant expenses, particularly the billions spent annually on training large models, it may achieve profitability by 2026. However, the company projects that the computational costs for model training will escalate significantly in the coming years, reaching $9.5 billion annually by 2026—excluding the upfront training costs for developing large models.

A research report from Zheshang Securities highlights that OpenAI is expected to generate $11.6 billion in revenue from commercialization by 2025, marking a year-over-year growth of 213.51%. The popular AI model application, ChatGPT, is set to accelerate this commercial expansion. The report notes that ChatGPT contributed $700 million in revenue in 2023, with projections indicating this could increase to $2.7 billion in 2024. Currently, ChatGPT has approximately 10 million paid subscribers at a monthly fee of $20; OpenAI plans to raise this to $22 by the end of the year and substantially increase it to $44 over the next five years—doubling the current subscription cost.

These figures suggest that OpenAI's growth prospects and commercial potential will be further validated in the coming years.