OpenAI Hits $25 Billion in Revenue and Eyes a $1 Trillion IPO

OpenAI reached $25 billion in annualized revenue at the end of February 2026, up from $21.4 billion at year-end 2025. The figure represents a 17% increase in roughly eight weeks, driven by aggressive enterprise expansion and a paying business user base that grew from 5 million to 9 million between August 2025 and February 2026. ChatGPT now serves over 900 million weekly active users. For context on how unusual this growth is: Salesforce took about 18 years to reach $25 billion in annual revenue. Google took about 17. Facebook took about 12. OpenAI reached the same mark in roughly 39 months. The company is now targeting a public listing as early as the fourth quarter of 2026, with internal projections pointing to a valuation of up to $1 trillion at IPO, which would be the largest public offering in history. OpenAI has hired its first head of investor relations and selected law firms to lead the preparations. The financial picture is not simple, though. OpenAI is spending roughly as much as it earns, with annual cash burn projected to reach $57 billion by 2027. Profitability is not expected until 2030. Rival Anthropic is approaching $19 billion in annualized revenue and projects breaking even by 2028, two years ahead of OpenAI. Ads began appearing for free and entry-level ChatGPT users in January 2026, with projections showing ad revenue scaling from $1 billion in 2026 to $25 billion by 2029. For businesses in Nigeria building on AI APIs or using ChatGPT for operations, the transition to a public company means pricing pressure, tier restructuring, and more commercial decision-making around what features remain free. The tools you rely on today are being shaped by IPO preparation. If you are building products or client workflows on top of AI platforms, understanding who owns the infrastructure, and how they plan to monetize it, is now a business strategy question.