OpenAI misses revenue and user targets ahead of IPO, WSJ reports

TL;DR:

• The Wall Street Journal reports OpenAI has missed monthly revenue and user targets in recent months, with chief financial officer Sarah Friar privately questioning whether the company can fund its existing compute commitments if growth does not accelerate.
• ChatGPT growth slowed in late 2025 and OpenAI fell short of an internal goal to reach 1 billion weekly active users by year-end, with subscriber defections also reported.
• The shortfall sits awkwardly against OpenAI’s $250bn Azure commitment, its newly opened distribution on AWS and Google Cloud, and a planned IPO at roughly a $1tn valuation — and reframes recent UK CIO conversations about single-vendor AI dependency.

OpenAI has fallen short of its goals for new users and revenue in recent months, sparking concern among some company leaders about whether the company can keep paying for its data-centre commitments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the report, chief financial officer Sarah Friar has told colleagues she is worried OpenAI may not be able to fund future computing contracts if revenue does not grow fast enough.

OpenAI missed multiple monthly revenue targets earlier this year after losing ground to Anthropic in coding and enterprise markets, the WSJ said. ChatGPT’s growth slowed toward the end of 2025, and OpenAI fell short of an internal target to reach 1 billion weekly active users for the chatbot by year-end. The company has also grappled with subscriber defections.

In a joint emailed statement to Reuters, CEO Sam Altman and Friar pushed back: “This is ridiculous. We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.”

How this fits the wider OpenAI picture

The shortfall is being reported in the same week OpenAI publicly restructured its Microsoft pact, ending Microsoft’s exclusive distribution and clearing the way for OpenAI to sell directly to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud customers. That deal also confirmed OpenAI’s continued $250 billion spend commitment on Azure through 2032 — a number that becomes harder to justify if monthly revenue keeps slipping. The Musk v Altman trial that opened in California on Monday adds another layer of uncertainty: Musk is asking for the unwinding of OpenAI’s for-profit conversion and more than $134 billion in damages.

The juxtaposition is uncomfortable for OpenAI’s planned IPO at roughly a $1 trillion valuation. Analysts pointed out earlier this year that Anthropic’s Claude family had quietly captured a meaningful share of coding and enterprise workloads, including inside Microsoft’s own products. The new MSFT-OAI deal also frees Microsoft to push Anthropic harder inside Copilot — exactly the dynamic Friar appears to be worried about.

What it means for UK enterprises

For UK CIOs, the WSJ report should raise the visibility of vendor-concentration risk on board agendas. Many UK financial services, professional services and public-sector AI deployments rest on OpenAI models accessed via Azure or, increasingly, AWS. A scenario in which OpenAI cannot fund its compute roadmap, or in which the IPO arrives at a markedly lower valuation, would not directly stop those services — but it could change roadmap commitments, pricing and the product cadence enterprises have come to expect. UK procurement teams that have not yet evaluated Anthropic, open-weight models or domestically-developed alternatives now have a fresh, named reason to start.

Looking forward

The next data points to watch are OpenAI’s quarterly revenue disclosures around the IPO and any change in tone from the company’s compute and data-centre announcements. A genuine pivot — pulling back from Azure spend, scaling back agentic-product launches, or repricing ChatGPT subscriptions — would confirm the WSJ narrative. A snap turnaround would show Friar’s worries were over-stated. UK readers should not assume the headline contradiction between OpenAI’s commercial commitments and its actual revenue trajectory will resolve quickly.