Revenue is on metric. Another important metric is gross margin. OpenAI's gross margin is estimated at 33%[0]. They also have to pay Microsoft 20% of revenue. S

Revenue is on metric. Another important metric is gross margin. OpenAI's gross margin is estimated at 33%[0]. They also have to pay Microsoft 20% of revenue. So, for each $1 of revenue: Revenue $1.00 COGS (inference) (0.67) Microsoft (0.20) Gross margin $0.13 That $0.13 must cover "everything else": R&D, payroll, etc., and ideally leave some profit on the table. The problem for OpenAI (and other pure AI companies) is that inference is not like software that sells at marginal cost (build once, sell everywhere), but each token costs money. Inference gets cheaper, but newer models require more computing power and consume more tokens. So the gross margin does not improve over time. Break-even in the future won't come from just growing API usage and subscriber base. [0] https://sacra.com/c/openai/ https://sacra.com/c/openai/