Where will OpenAI's $200 billion in revenue come from?

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OpenAI’s monster forecast

OpenAI projects $200 billion in revenue by 2030, burning $115 billion to get there. Presumably this is in preparation to raise money–perhaps even IPO. Here’s a chart, in case picturing 2024’s $3.7 billion in revenue growing over 5,000% in 5 years is difficult:

To put that in perspective, that is almost as much as Microsoft’s revenue today ($282 billion in 2025). I get that growth happens faster today, but it took Microsoft 43 years to get there. OpenAI is going to do it in roughly five. How?

Where is the revenue coming from?

According to internal documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal and The Information, OpenAI has a plan. By 2030, they expect:

• ~$90 billion from ChatGPT subscriptions (up from $10 billion ARR in 2025)

• ~$29 billion from AI agents—products like "Operator" priced at $2,000 to $20,000 per month

• ~$25-110 billion from monetizing free users through ads and affiliate commerce

• ~$22 billion from API/enterprise sales (up from $2 billion)

Let's start with the idea that companies will suddenly spend massive amounts on AI agents and enterprise software. From 2029 to 2030, OpenAI grows by around $45 billion—which is more than all of Salesforce's 2025 revenue. Is the idea that people just turn off Salesforce, and move all that spending over to OpenAI?

Or maybe they shut off Oracle, which did $57 billion in revenue in 2025?

If they shut off both, voila–$95 billion right there. Given the stickiness of CRM and ERP software I find that exceptionally unlikely. So the revenue would have to come from somewhere else–and possibly eclipse what companies spend on their systems of record.

Typically large companies spend 2-3% of revenue on ERP or CRM. Were OpenAI to replace that spend, or get an incremental 2-3% spend, it would imply that OpenAI is serving companies doing a combined ~$2 trillion in revenue–representing, pick your relationship, 10% of the Fortune 500 by revenue or 7% of US GDP (based on $51 billion in OpenAI enterprise revenue).

I’m dubious. But Open AI says only about a quarter of the revenue will come from enterprise–$29 billion from AI agents and $22 from API and enterprise sales. Where does the other half come from? Consumers? Let's dig in there.

What about consumer?

If a quarter of OpenAI’s revenue comes from enterprise, that leaves $150 billion to come from consumers.