OpenAI
Foundation Models
Valuation
$852B (Mar 2026 — largest private round ever)
Total Funding
$130B+
Revenue
$24B ARR (~$2B/month run rate, 2026)
Profit Status
Not yet profitable (heavy compute spend; ads pilot $100M+ ARR)
Revenue Growth
>200% YoY
Employees
~9,268 (Jun 2026)
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company building toward AGI for the benefit of humanity. Now a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). Developer of the GPT and o-series models, ChatGPT (1B+ WAU), GPT Image 2, Sora, and Codex coding agent. The $852B valuation funding round (Mar 2026) is the largest private fundraise in history.
Company History
Founded 2015 as nonprofit. Capped-profit structure 2019. ChatGPT launched Nov 2022 (100M users in 60 days). GPT-4 Mar 2023. Sam Altman briefly fired Nov 2023. GPT-4o May 2024. o1 Sep 2024. $6.6B at $157B Oct 2024. $40B SoftBank at $300B Mar 2025. GPT-5 launched (2025). Microsoft partnership restructured Apr 2026 (exclusivity removed, AWS allowed). $122B raised at $852B valuation Mar 2026 — largest private round ever. GPT-5.5 default model Apr 2026. ChatGPT crossed 1B WAU May 2026. Now a Public Benefit Corporation.
AI Models & Benchmarks
Current default ChatGPT model. Drives record engagement across agentic workflows. Replaces GPT-5 as default for Plus/Pro/Business/Enterprise.
Major leap in coding, math, science, and visual reasoning. Available to all tiers including Free.
Successor to GPT Image 1.5. Default image model in ChatGPT. Three quality tiers, three resolution options. DALL-E 2/3 removed from API May 2026.
Specialized reasoning model for software engineering, math, scientific reasoning. Being retired from ChatGPT Aug 26, 2026.
Benchmarks
Higher usage limits than o3. Strong for high-volume reasoning tasks. Vision capabilities.
Autonomous coding agent. 3M weekly users by Apr 2026 — fastest-growing OpenAI product.
Omni model - text, image, and audio natively. Legacy tier now.
Benchmarks
Small, fast, affordable model - replaces GPT-3.5 Turbo.
Benchmarks
State-of-the-art text-to-image model with prompt adherence.
Text-to-video up to 60 seconds, 1080p, photorealistic.
Open-source speech recognition model. Near human-level in 99 languages.
3072-dimension embedding model, best retrieval performance.
Company Timeline
Dec 2015
Founded as nonprofit by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever
Nov 2022
ChatGPT launches - reaches 100M users in 60 days; fastest consumer app ever
Mar 2023
GPT-4 released with multimodal capabilities
Nov 2023
Sam Altman briefly fired by board, rehired within 5 days
May 2024
GPT-4o - native audio/vision/text omni model
Sep 2024
o1 reasoning model released
Oct 2024
$6.6B raised at $157B valuation
Mar 2025
SoftBank invests $40B at $300B valuation
Apr 2025
o3, o4-mini, GPT-4.1 (1M context); ChatGPT 500M WAU
2025
GPT-5 launched; GPT Image 1 replaces DALL-E 3; Codex coding agent; Operator agents
Feb 2026
ChatGPT free tier gets ads; new 'Go' ($8/mo) tier launched
Mar 2026
$122B raise at $852B valuation — largest private round ever; now a Public Benefit Corporation
Apr 2026
GPT-5.5 becomes default; GPT Image 2 launched; Microsoft exclusivity ended
May 2026
ChatGPT crosses 1 BILLION weekly active users — fastest consumer product to reach this milestone
Products & Services
Company Details
Focus Area
Foundation Models
Stage
Founded
2015
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA
Employees
~9,268 (Jun 2026)
Financial Overview
Total Funding
$130B+
Valuation
$852B (Mar 2026 — largest private round ever)
Revenue (2026)
$24B ARR (~$2B/month run rate, 2026)
Profit Status
Not yet profitable (heavy compute spend; ads pilot $100M+ ARR)
Revenue Growth
>200% YoY
Funding Rounds
- Strategic$1BApr 2019Microsoft
- Strategic$10BJan 2023Microsoft
- Series$6.6BOct 2024Thrive Capital, NVIDIA
- SoftBank$40BMar 2025SoftBank
- Mega Round$122BMar 2026Amazon, NVIDIA
Key Investors
Key People
- Sam Altman (CEO)
- Greg Brockman (President)
- Kevin Weil (Chief Product Officer)
- Chris Lehane (Chief Global Affairs)