OpenAI has hit $10 billion in annual recurring revenue, marking a new milestone for the generative artificial intelligence company as it continues to surge in popularity.

According to CNBC, the figure includes sales from the company’s consumer products, ChatGPT business products and its application programming interface. The figure excludes licensing revenue from Microsoft Corp. and large onetime deals.

The growth is remarkable given that only 18 months ago, OpenAI’s annual recurring revenue hit $1.6 billion and it has been just more than two years since the company launched ChatGPT Plus, its first paying product. The $10 billion is also nearly double the $5.5 billion in annual recurring revenue OpenAI saw through last year.

The explosive growth has come on multiple fronts, particularly as more people embrace and use AI, with ChatGPT having some 800 million to 1 billion users as of April, a figure more than likely higher again today and up from 400 million users in February. Turning mainstream is a core tenet of the company’s growth and as noted in April, much of the growth this year came from an upgrade to ChatGPT-4o that allowed users to make comic images, including those mimicking Japanese cartoon series Project Ghibli, such as the one above.

OpenAI is also reportedly aiming to hit $125 billion in revenue in 2029, per an unnamed person referenced by CNBC.

The growth comes after OpenAI raised a round of $40 billion on a $300 billion valuation in late March. The $300 billion valuation made OpenAI the world’s second most valuable private company alongside TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd., trailing only Elon Musk’s SpaceX Corp.

Not only has OpenAI used the billions it has raised — the total of which is now about $57.9 billion — to sustain growth and to design new AI models, it has also used the funding to enter agreements to acquire companies to expand its offerings.

In May, OpenAI signed two deals. The first was an agreement to acquire Windsurf, an AI-assisted coding tool formerly known as Codeium, for $3 billion. The deal was reported as a move by OpenAI to strengthen its coding assistant offering, with coding becoming a popular use for generative AI technology.

Later the same month, OpenAI announced it was acquiring io Products Inc., a consumer electronics startup led by former Apple Inc. Chief Design Officer Jony Ive, for $6.5 billion. The deal will see Ive, best known as the designer of iconic Apple Inc. products such as the iPhone, the iMac and the Apple Watch, lead the development of a new AI-powered consumer device in collaboration with OpenAI.

The acquisition notably marked OpenAI’s first major step into hardware, signaling plans to integrate artificial intelligence more deeply into everyday consumer experiences.

Image: SiliconANGLE/ChatGPT-4o