OpenAI missed internal targets for weekly active users and revenue, raising concerns among company leaders about its ability to fund massive data center commitments

OpenAI missed its internal goal of reaching one billion weekly active users for ChatGPT by the end of last year and also missed its annual revenue target after Google's Gemini saw massive growth and ate into its market share, with the company also losing ground to Anthropic in coding and enterprise markets earlier this year. CFO Sarah Friar has raised concerns internally that the company may not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn't grow fast enough, and board directors have begun scrutinizing CEO Sam Altman's data center deals, which have put OpenAI on the hook for roughly $600B in future spending commitments that the company expects to burn through in three years even if it hits ambitious revenue targets. Altman and Friar issued a joint statement calling reports of division between them “ridiculous,” though Friar has separately expressed reservations about OpenAI's aggressive IPO timeline, cautioning that the company isn't yet ready to meet the reporting standards required of a public company.