OpenAI’s planned cash burn was unlike anything we’d ever seen — now they’re doubling it
OpenAI is still the molten mass at the center of the AI universe, burning billions as it pulls talent, capital, and companies into its orbit.
Many of the world’s most successful tech startups burned cash for years before they got out of the red. Lighting tens of millions of dollars — or even a few billion in the most extreme cases, like Uber, Tesla, or Netflix — on fire every year became the norm as growth-obsessed disruptors invested in software, hardware, branding, and content to reach the scale required for their margins to turn positive.
But, as we noted last year, the sheer scale of OpenAI’s cash burn plans have been unlike anything we’ve ever seen. And thanks to some great new reporting from The Information late last week, we know that the company’s cash burn forecasts are actually even more insane than we previously thought.
Per the new figures reported, OpenAI expects to burn through $218 billion between 2026 and 2029, about $111 billion more than the company’s internal projections from just two quarters ago.
That $218 billion is 23x what Tesla burned in its cash-incinerating phase from 2007 to 2018.
In fairness to OpenAI, ChatGPT is probably still the fastest-growing stand-alone product of all time, and if the company hits its revenue goal, it certainly won’t be the cash burn of previous years that has people talking.
Indeed, after chewing through the equivalent of the GDP of Ukraine, the company expects cash flow to turn dramatically positive in 2030 as revenue soars to ~$280 billion in 2030 thanks to consumer ChatGPT subscriptions as well as a plethora of new revenue streams, including API access, dedicated agentic enterprise subscriptions, advertising, and even AI-powered hardware (including maybe a smart speaker and a smart lamp).
