According to reports, OpenAI's annual revenue exceeded $1.6 billion just two months after reaching $1.3 billion.

According to Information on Saturday, citing two informed sources, OpenAI's sales momentum is growing as the company seeks to raise new funds. It is reported that the company hopes to establish a financing round with a valuation of at least $100 billion.

OpenAI's rapid sales growth began with the launch of its paid version of the ChatGPT service, ChatGPT Plus, in February 2023. Prior to this, the company primarily generated revenue by providing application programming interfaces (APIs) of its artificial intelligence models to developers. It is reported that the company had a loss of $540 million in 2022, with only $28 million in revenue.

According to Reuters, OpenAI initially expected sales of $200 million in 2023. However, ChatGPT Plus proved to be more popular than the company expected: it is reported that OpenAI's revenue exceeded $1 billion in August and reached $1.3 billion two months later. The new report from Information states that OpenAI's annual revenue has exceeded $1.6 billion, indicating a growth of over 20% in the past two months.

The company's sales momentum is expected to continue into 2024. According to the new report, some OpenAI executives believe that its annual recurring revenue will almost quadruple by the end of the year, reaching $5 billion.

This optimistic outlook raises the possibility that the company will not only rely on the demand for its existing products to sustain its sales growth. In particular, it may plan to launch new AI services to create additional revenue streams.

In November, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the company is developing a new flagship large-scale language model called GPT-5. He stated that it will be more advanced than GPT-4. However, Altman did not specify when GPT-5 will be released or what new features can be expected.

OpenAI's rapid revenue growth helps the company obtain higher valuations from investors in the coming year.

In April, TechCrunch reported that the AI development company completed a secondary stock sale with a valuation of $2.7 billion to $2.9 billion. Last month, sources told Bloomberg that OpenAI is close to completing another secondary stock sale with a valuation of up to $86 billion. The sources added that the company may soon be worth over $100 billion due to its ongoing negotiations with investors for a new round of financing.

It is said that the surge in demand for artificial intelligence driving OpenAI's revenue and income growth has also benefited its competitors. Large-scale language model developer Anthropic PBC is reportedly expected to achieve an annual revenue run rate of $850 million this year, far exceeding its estimated $500 million in August. The company is also said to be in negotiations to raise $750 million at a valuation of $15 billion.