OpenAI enterprise revenue growth has crossed a threshold the company did not expect to reach until the end of 2026: the business-customer side of the operation now generates more income than the consumer segment led by ChatGPT. Finance chief Sarah Friar disclosed the shift to current shareholders at a meeting held on Friday, confirming that the two lines (which opened the year at a 60-40 split in favour of consumer) have now reversed.
‘We entered the year at 60-40, but enterprise has accelerated much faster than expected and those lines have now crossed,’ Friar said, according to a person who attended the meeting but asked not to be named due to confidentiality. ‘The majority of our revenue is now enterprise.’
OpenAI enterprise revenue growth runs ahead of internal forecasts
Earlier this year, Friar had told CNBC that the company expected its consumer and enterprise businesses to reach parity by the end of 2026. The early crossing of that threshold arrived alongside a confirmed annualised revenue run rate of $40 billion, a figure Bloomberg reported first and which CNBC subsequently confirmed. Slides viewed by CNBC showed that OpenAI’s run rate increased 20% month over month in July, with business customers growing faster still at 32% over the same period.
Friar also signalled a change in how enterprise customers are using AI tooling. The era of so-called tokenmaxxing, the practice of allowing employees to accumulate large AI bills without demonstrating commensurate output, is over, she said. ‘Enterprise customers have moved from tokenmaxxing to focusing on cost per unit of intelligence,’ Friar said, according to the person present. She pointed to the company’s newest model being ‘54% more efficient’ on agentic coding tasks, alongside recent price reductions across OpenAI‘s model suite.
Executive departures and the advertising run rate
The investor meeting was planned before a turbulent week of executive departures and was held exclusively with current shareholders. It came the day after revenue chief Denise Dresser stepped down, eight months into the role. Dresser, who had spent more than a decade at Salesforce and was most recently chief executive of Slack, said in a LinkedIn post that she was leaving to pursue other opportunities. Two days before that announcement, longtime executive Brad Lightcap said he was ending an eight-year stint at the company to ‘start something new.’
Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and a co-founder, joined Friday’s meeting and thanked Dresser for her contributions and for building the enterprise foundation, the person in attendance said. Brockman also expressed enthusiasm for her replacement, Dali Rajic, who was previously operating chief at cybersecurity company Wiz, now owned by Google. Rajic was introduced to OpenAI through Thrive founder Josh Kushner, according to a separate person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak about the recruiting process.
On the advertising front, Friar said OpenAI ‘made great strides,’ with advertising approaching a $1 billion run rate. The company began testing ads in ChatGPT in February.
Executives also fielded questions on the competitive threat posed by open-source Chinese models. Brockman brushed off the concern, saying there is a misunderstanding around open source being cheaper, the person said. When asked about the timing of a potential initial public offering, executives declined to comment, citing a confidential SEC filing.
With enterprise now the majority revenue driver and the advertising line approaching a billion-dollar run rate, the company’s next catalyst to watch is the confidential SEC filing, which Friar and Brockman indicated at Friday’s meeting would constrain any further public commentary on IPO timing.