OpenAI reportedly misses user, sales targets

OpenAI missed internal targets for user growth and sales in recent months, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The shortfall raised concerns among executives that revenue may not keep pace with heavy spending on AI infrastructure.

The company missed several monthly sales goals in 2026 as Anthropic gained ground in coding and enterprise tools.

ChatGPT also failed to reach OpenAI’s target of 1 billion weekly active users by the end of 2025.

Subscriber churn also remained a problem as Google’s Gemini became more popular last year, and slower sales growth could leave OpenAI unable to fund future computing needs, said Sarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

OpenAI’s growth needs to match heavy infrastructure costs

OpenAI’s revenue climbed fast, reaching about $20 billion in annual recurring revenue in 2025, while its computing capacity grew about 9.5 times from 2023 to 2025 1.
That pace helps cover OpenAI’s commitments, including a deal to buy another $250 billion in Azure cloud services from Microsoft, according to Microsoft 2.
OpenAI moved from depending on Microsoft in 2023 and 2024 to using several infrastructure providers 1.
That setup lets OpenAI train AI models on the newest hardware when top performance matters, while shifting high-volume work to lower-cost systems when efficiency matters more 1.

A slowdown at OpenAI raises concentration risk for Microsoft

OpenAI accounts for about 45% of Microsoft’s $625 billion backlog, also known as remaining performance obligations, which is revenue from signed contracts that Microsoft expects to book over time 2.
Investors have already reacted. Microsoft shares fell about 6% in after-hours trading after the company disclosed OpenAI’s share of that backlog 3.
Microsoft said the extra $250 billion Azure agreement is tied to OpenAI’s restructuring as a public benefit corporation, a for-profit company structure that also includes a public-interest mission. That has raised questions about whether OpenAI can keep funding future computing needs if growth slows 2.
OpenAI’s results matter for Microsoft as it builds more AI capacity. Microsoft spent $37.5 billion in capital expenditures, or spending on data centers and other long-term infrastructure, in the cited quarter 2.