Wow. Just?.?.?.?wow.
In the first half of 2025, OpenAI generated $4.3 billion in revenue, putting the company on track to meet its full-year revenue projection of $13 billion, The Information reported Tuesday. Meanwhile, the company burned $2.5 billion over the same time period, in large part due to its high research and development costs for developing its AI models.
Other significant costs included $2 billion spent on sales and marketing, nearly doubling what OpenAI spent on sales and marketing in all of 2024. Though not a cash expense, OpenAI also spent nearly $2.5 billion on stock-based equity compensation in the first six months of 2025, nearly double what it spent in the same period a year earlier, reflecting an increasingly competitive market for talent.
OpenAI posted an operating loss of $7.8 billion in the first half. The company is required to hand over 20% of its revenue to Microsoft, though it has projected that percentage will fall over time, helping it save $50 billion through 2030.
As OpenAI closes out the first half of the year, it’s looking to sell employee shares in a tender offer that would value its for-profit arm at about $500 billion, up from $260 billion around the start of this year. It’s also beginning an effort to raise tens of billions of dollars from Nvidia and others for data centers it plans to operate.
The above is from the newsletter version of The Information. Those that want the full thing will need a subscription, but here’s the article.
There’s a lot to unpick here. But to Alphaville the most hilarious aspect is that OpenAI spent more on marketing and equity options for its employees than it made in revenue in the first half of 2025.