OpenAI ChatGPT falls short of revenue targets, and the CFO admits that compute spending may not be covered.

As ChatGPT user growth slows, and with both Anthropic and Google moving in from both sides, OpenAI—at the critical moment in its sprint toward an IPO—is facing unprecedented financial pressure.

(Before it burns through a trillion dollars, can OpenAI turn ChatGPT into a cash cow? )

OpenAI raises an alarm: both its 2025 user and revenue targets missed

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI failed to meet its internal target for 2025—having ChatGPT surpass 1 billion weekly active users—along with an undisclosed annual revenue target. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has expressed concerns to other top executives within the company that, if revenue growth doesn’t accelerate fast enough, OpenAI may not be able to cover the costs of data center contracts it has already signed.

The board of directors has also been scrutinizing the company’s compute capacity procurement agreements more closely in recent times, questioning the strategy by CEO Sam Altman to keep expanding computing power even as business momentum slows.

ChatGPT’s growth slowdown is nothing new. At the end of last year, Google Gemini surged quickly, capturing a sizable share of traffic from OpenAI; this year, Anthropic has continued to strengthen its competitiveness in software development and the enterprise market, causing OpenAI to miss its monthly revenue targets for several consecutive months. The churn of subscription users has long been a worry that management can no longer ignore.

The $600B compute bet begins to wobble

For years, Altman has firmly believed that a shortage of compute capacity is the biggest bottleneck to OpenAI’s growth, and last year he even signed on to it, with total future spending commitments of roughly $600B.

However, as ChatGPT’s growth momentum has slowed, this “compute deployment strategy” has begun to spark debate inside the company. Friar and other executives are actively pushing for cost controls and financial discipline, creating a split with Altman’s expansionist approach. In response, Altman and Friar issued a joint statement emphasizing that the two are “working together every day to secure the most compute possible,” and that their positions are completely aligned.

On one hand, the company is trimming non-core projects like Sora to control spending; on the other, it continues to bet on the rapid growth of the software development tool Codex and recently rolled out GPT-5.5, which ranks ahead in multiple benchmark tests.

Can the biggest fundraising in history raise enough money? The IPO timeline is full of variables

In March this year, OpenAI completed what was the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history, raising $122 billion, led by Amazon (Amazon), Nvidia (Nvidia), and the SoftBank group (SoftBank), among others. The company’s valuation reached $852 billion.

However, sources familiar with the matter say that the funding would run out within the next three years before the company hits its revenue targets. And that’s not even accounting for the fact that some of the funds come with conditions, depending on whether specific partnership agreements are finalized.

Regarding its plan to go public by year-end, Friar has taken a more cautious stance, saying OpenAI has not yet met the strict financial reporting standards required of public companies. Altman, however, is more inclined to push forward with the IPO timeline. With the lawsuit filed by Musk (Elon Musk) against OpenAI and Altman also formally opening in court this week, the company can arguably be said to be burning candles at both ends.

With the fourfold pressures of growth bottlenecks, intensifying competition, internal disagreements, and legal litigation, whether OpenAI can successfully ring the IPO bell by the end of the year remains unknown.

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