OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar tells employees ARR in July topped all of Q2
OpenAI's CFO Sarah Friar informed staff that the company's July revenue exceeded its entire second-quarter performance. The company is currently managing high infrastructure costs and intense competition from rivals like Anthropic and open-source models.
Why it matters
As OpenAI prepares for a potential IPO, demonstrating revenue growth is critical to justifying its massive valuation and ongoing multi-billion dollar compute investments.
As OpenAI chases rival Anthropic in the enterprise and tries to sustain growth in the face of new competition from cheaper open-source alternatives, the artificial intelligence company is seeking to reassure staffers that the business remains healthy.
In an internal meeting with employees on Wednesday, finance chief Sarah Friar and board chair Bret Taylor touted OpenAI's revenue growth and addressed competition with Anthropic , CNBC has learned. Friar said OpenAI's annualized recurring revenue in July exceeded the entire second quarter.
"And Q2 was no slouch," Friar said, according to a partial transcript of the meeting that was reviewed by CNBC.
Friar and Taylor said momentum was driven by the release of the company's GPT-5.6 series of models, its new enterprise agent called ChatGPT Work, and growing adoption of its AI coding tool, Codex.
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