“OpenAI only makes 27% of its revenue from selling access to its models — around a billion dollars in annual recurring revenue — with the rest ($2.7 billion or so) coming from subscriptions to ChatGPT.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
OpenAI makes only 27% of its revenue, around $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, from selling access to its models, with the rest (about $2.7 billion) coming from ChatGPT subscriptions.
Assessment: Unresolved Evidence as of
Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it
Where's Your Ed At, Deep Impact, paragraph 101.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment wyea-deep-impact-3961ab-a1
We recorded 50 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2025-01-29. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
From the speaker
- 27% of its revenue
- selling access to its models
- around a billion dollars in annual recurring revenue
- the rest ($2.7 billion or so)
- subscriptions to ChatGPT
Our interpretation
- Treat selling access to models as API and model-licensing revenue, including relevant partner channels.
- Preserve the explicit annual-recurring-revenue wording; do not silently substitute full-year revenue.
- Use calendar 2024, the latest completed reporting year before publication and the year described by the underlying financial reporting. The post does not identify a particular run-rate measurement date.
- The figures are approximate press-derived estimates, not an explicit claim about audited accounting results.
- The stated amounts imply approximately $3.7 billion in combined annualized revenue.
Counts as supported if: A consistent 2024 revenue snapshot establishes approximately $1 billion in annualized model-access revenue, approximately $2.7 billion in annualized ChatGPT subscription revenue, and a model-access share near 27%.
Counts as contradicted if: Comparable evidence for the same reporting snapshot and revenue categories materially conflicts with the stated amounts or share.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Unresolved
The record was checked, and the evidence available by the cutoff does not settle it.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
The amounts and 27% calculation match reported projections for 2024 annual revenue. They do not establish the stated annual recurring revenue breakdown. A later report gives a materially higher total ARR, but lacks the matched historical component data needed for a clean contradiction. Scoring the claim as supported would require silently changing its measure.
Limitations
- The original financial documents were unavailable.
- The readable financial evidence consists of news reporting and analyst estimates.
- The full-year figure in e1 is a projection of revenue for the year, not a verified realized result.
- The observation does not specify its run-rate snapshot.
Evidence (3 items)
Context only: Fortune,
According to documents seen by the New York Times, the company expects revenue of $3.7 billion in 2024.
Why it matters here: The same paragraph assigns $2.7 billion to ChatGPT and $1 billion to other businesses. These are projections for annual revenue, so they explain the figures without verifying the claimed recurring-revenue snapshot.
- Publisher
- Fortune
- Kind of source
- News report
- Measures
- OpenAI, Projected full-year revenue and business breakdown, USD billions of dollars, estimate, 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31
- Arithmetic
- 1 / 3.7 × 100 = 27.027...% (inputs: Projected other-business revenue: $1 billion; Projected total annual revenue: $3.7 billion; 27% to the nearest whole percentage point; this calculation concerns projected annual revenue, not ARR.)
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: Tanay Jaipuria,
Based on their projected total revenue of $3.7B for 2024, I estimate OpenAI ending 2024 at ~$5B-5.2B in annualized run rate revenue.
Why it matters here: This contemporaneous analysis distinguishes annual revenue from annualized revenue. Its year-end number is an estimate rather than an observed outcome.
- Publisher
- Tanay Jaipuria
- Kind of source
- Secondary summary
- Measures
- OpenAI, Forecast year-end total annualized revenue, USD billions of dollars per year, estimate, 2024-12-01 to 2024-12-31
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: CNBC,
For all of last year, OpenAI had around $5.5 billion in ARR.
Why it matters here: The reported total raises a material concern about treating $3.7 billion as the relevant ARR total. It does not provide a matching 2024 model-access and subscription breakdown, and its historical snapshot wording is imprecise.
- Publisher
- CNBC
- Kind of source
- News report
- Measures
- OpenAI, Total annual recurring revenue, USD billions of dollars per year, company reported, 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
A dated 2024 financial record showing model-access ARR, ChatGPT subscription ARR, total ARR, and consistent treatment of partner revenue.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Where's Your Ed At, Deep Impact
OpenAI only makes 27% of its revenue from selling access to its models — around a billion dollars in annual recurring revenue — with the rest ($2.7 billion or so) coming from subscriptions to ChatGPT.
- Where
- paragraph 101
- Published
- 2025-01-29
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment wyea-deep-impact-3961ab-a1: Current. Outcome: Unresolved. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.