OpenAI’s Revenue Surprise; Nvidia Could Spark a Talent War with TSMC

The biggest question our team has faced upon reporting OpenAI’s revenue growth in the past year or so was whether Microsoft was a critical contributor to the startup’s sales. Most people we talked to had assumed Microsoft was, but the definitive answer is actually “No.”

While Microsoft sells OpenAI models to its own Azure cloud customers, the ChatGPT maker seems to be doing just fine selling the subscription version of its chatbot as well as access to its large language models to professionals and businesses directly. In fact, just 5% of its current rate of annualized revenue came from OpenAI’s cut of revenue from Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI cloud service, The Information reported on Wednesday. We shouldn’t forget, of course, that Microsoft servers power OpenAI’s business and thus Microsoft has had the right to take a cut of some of OpenAI’s direct sales, so the startup’s net revenue may be a little lower than the $3.4 billion in annualized revenue that we reported. 

Still, OpenAI’s growth has been dramatic—100% growth, in fact, in just the past six months or so. For those of you counting, that revenue pace implies OpenAI generated $283 million in revenue in the past month. And ChatGPT only launched 18 months ago!