In the race toward AI dominance, OpenAI stands as one of the most influential forces of the decade. But behind the staggering user numbers and explosive revenue growth lies a surprising financial reality: even by 2030, the company may still not be profitable. A series of new reports—from The Information, HSBC, Reuters, and Microsoft filings with the SEC—paint a complex picture of a company growing at unprecedented speed while burning cash at equally historic levels.
A Massive User Base—And Even Bigger Ambitions
According to The Information, OpenAI is projected to have at least 220 million paying ChatGPT subscribers by 2030, a staggering leap from the current paid user base. Today, ChatGPT attracts 800 million weekly active users, and as of July, roughly 35 million users pay for its $20/month Plus or $200/year subscription plans.
OpenAI’s growth trajectory is unlike anything the tech world has seen since the rise of the smartphone. The company’s annual revenue is expected to hit $20 billion by the end of this year, Reuters reported—an extraordinary achievement for an AI firm that only launched ChatGPT two years ago.
HSBC’s Forecast: 3 Billion Weekly Users, 300 Million Paying Customers
HSBC’s latest update, shared through The Financial Times, suggests an even more explosive expansion than OpenAI’s own projections. The bank anticipates ChatGPT reaching 3 billion weekly active users by 2030—nearly half the world’s population.
Even more striking, HSBC believes 10% of these users will be paying customers, amounting to 300 million subscribers. That’s 80 million more than OpenAI’s internal projections and an indicator of just how indispensable generative AI may become in everyday life.
The Cost of Growth: $207 Billion in Compute Needs
But such an exponential scale comes with astronomical costs.
HSBC also warns that OpenAI will still not be profitable by 2030, primarily because the computing power required to run its models will skyrocket. The bank estimates that OpenAI will need at least $207 billion in compute capacity to sustain this growth—an amount larger than the GDP of many countries.
This massive infrastructure requirement highlights a fundamental truth: AI at scale is incredibly expensive, and even billions in subscription revenue may not be enough to offset the cost of GPUs, data centers, and continuous model training.
Microsoft’s Investment: Huge Potential, Huge Losses
Microsoft, which holds a 27% stake in OpenAI, is also feeling the financial strain of this rapid expansion. The tech giant has committed $13 billion to OpenAI and has already paid $11.6 billion.
Its SEC filings for Q1 FY2026 revealed that Microsoft’s net income dropped by $3.1 billion due to recognized losses from its OpenAI investment. Because Microsoft treats its stake as equity, it must record its share of OpenAI’s profits—or losses—under “other income (expense), net.”
According to analysis by The Register, this means OpenAI likely incurred around $11.5 billion in losses in a single quarter—a sign of just how capital-intensive frontier AI development has become.
An Unprecedented Business Paradox
OpenAI’s situation represents a striking paradox in modern tech:
- Soaring usage
- Massive revenue growth
- A huge and expanding paying user base
- But equally enormous operational losses
In any other industry, 220 million paying customers and $20 billion in annual revenue would define a wildly profitable enterprise. But AI is different. The cost of training, fine-tuning, and operating advanced models like GPT-5 and beyond runs into tens of billions of dollars—every year.
The Road to 2030: A High-Stakes Bet on the Future of Intelligence
OpenAI’s journey toward 2030 underscores a defining truth about the AI era: the companies building the future of intelligence are operating at a scale—and expense—never seen before in the technology landscape.
Even if profitability remains elusive, OpenAI’s growth signals a world rapidly integrating generative AI into education, enterprise workflows, creativity, productivity, and everyday life. Whether OpenAI eventually becomes sustainably profitable or remains dependent on mega-investors like Microsoft, one thing is clear:
The AI revolution is just beginning, and OpenAI is betting everything on being the force that leads it.
Read more: Microsoft Launches Fara-7B, a Qwen-Based Agentic AI That Navigates the Web Like Humans
