International | 11:29 AM
OpenAI represents a suite of opportunities and risks for big Tech and investors as AI adoption is changing the world as we know it.
-From startup to US$300bn giant, OpenAI's ChatGPT rises to 700m users
-Google’s Gemini gains momentum as competition heats up
-Hyperscaler capex and Oracle’s US$30bn bet on OpenAI
-Market Bubbles, infrastructure strains, and AI’s global footprint
By Danielle Ecuyer
What a difference three years makes
Cast your mind back to November 2022; markets had just started to recover from the post-covid interest rate hiking cycle as central banks wrestled to pop the inflation genie back in the bottle.
It was also the month OpenAI launched ChatGPT, the now ubiquitous ‘AI’ platform which recently locked in another US$8.3bn of private equity and venture capital, reported as one tranche of a US$40bn funding round announced earlier in 2025.
Since then, the US stock market has risen by over US$21trn driven largely by the Magnificent Ten; the world’s largest technology companies riding the AI investment boom, with a plethora of smaller companies benefitting from the use of software, hardware and energy solutions as the infrastructure platform is built out to support AI.
The emerging AI behemoth, the puppet or the puppet master?
OpenAI was valued at US$300bn as at the beginning of August and ChatGPT has 700m-plus weekly average users, up from 200m a year ago, representing around 10% of the world’s population, achieved in under three years.
Already, this marks one of the most significant growth ramp ups in the technology sector. In a recent podcast ChatGPT’s head said, “we’ll hit a billion users soon”.
In the words of UBS, OpenAI is “one of the most consequential AI firms”, arguably one of the most consequential companies in the history of technology. It is the single largest customer of Nvidia GPUs, which now has a US$4trn-plus market capitalisation, with a growth tailwind rippling through the world’s largest technology companies.
Oracle’s latest quarterly report was a standout case in point. Despite ho-hum earnings, investors jumped on the company’s outlook statement including US$30bn of revenues coming from one customer in FY28, which has been assumed is OpenAI.
The stock price rallied 40% post the update, taking Oracle's valuation over the US$800bn mark.
The growth of OpenAI and ChatGPT is inextricably linked to the fortunes and potential disruption of even America’s largest companies.
In a recent in-depth update on the AI industry, UBS takes a deep dive into OpenAI’s growth prospects and the likely impacts on tech stalwarts and behemoths including Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and the software sector at large.
Taking a step back, let’s wrap some financial metrics around the company to contextualise OpenAI’s current and potential impacts.
Introducing: OpenAI, the centre of today's tech boom
Given OpenAI is a private company, analysts rely on credible media sources for latest information.
Estimated revenue for 2025 of US$13bn is quickly fading into the rear-view mirror with the New York Times noting OpenAI had recently passed US$12bn in run-rate revenue and could reach US$20bn in run-rate revenue by the end of 2025.
This infers a 2025 full year revenue run rate of US$15bn, compared to estimated revenue of US$3.4bn in 2024. It equates to a 275% growth rate. The company generated US$1bn in revenue in 2023.
Is it too far-fetched to project OpenAI can grow its revenue to US$129bn in 2029 which would be around the size of Amazon's cloud service AWS currently?
Not according to UBS, however, it would necessitate a compound average growth rate per annum of 70% which has never been witnessed at this scale.
OpenAI pointed to a rise of 60% growth in two months to over five million ChatGPT business paying users in August from three million in June. The company has also recently announced measures to expand into the enterprise segment with features like Operator agent and Deep Research tool.
ChatGPT can now link with aspects of Google Workspace including Gmail to apply the service to acting on emails and documents.
For observers, this has been highlighted as a push into taking on the large employees’ productivity market, dominated by both Google Workspace and Microsoft M365/Office 365.
Compared to an estimated 35m ChatGPT users, five million business users represent some 15% of the total which would align with management’s statement that circa 25% of revenues came from enterprises.
While you might be thinking this is all conjecture and blue-sky forecasts, the rise of OpenAI is almost single handedly supporting the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia, Google Cloud and more recently listed companies, like Coreweave, as well as software firms that serve it, like Datadog, Snowflake and Databricks.
If as the media reports, OpenAI is targeting revenue of US$86bn in FY28, a US$30bn spend with Oracle would represent 35% of revenue.
Industry sources have suggested OpenAI is investing 50% of revenues or around US$45bn on compute over the next three years. A shift from 100% use of Microsoft to 67% use of Oracle would have a major impact on Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure growth, and probably on their respective share prices too.
Success is increasingly linked to the success of all the ancillary technology companies that are benefitting from OpenAI's growth. Equally, it presents a risk in terms of both disruption and failure to achieve expected growth rates.
According to UBS, market opportunities for AI products remain both “attractive and still under-penetrated”.
Google announced on its second quarter earnings call it had 450m monthly average users on its own AI applications (Gemini) and over 100m users for its AI mode feature in its proprietary search toolbar.
Media reports suggest around 35m xAI Grok monthly average users and circa 30m for Anthropic's Claude users, although the latter's user base is more slanted to enterprise operations such as coding.
OpenAI is considered unique given the rarity of a private company achieving such scale and influence including the flow through to large publicly listed companies.
Latest data highlight the changing impacts of AI
According to a working paper from National Bureau of Economic Research, analysing 1.5m ChatGPT users’ conversations from June 2024 to July 2025, 70% of usage is personal, not professional.
The percentage of users with normally feminine names rose to 52% in July 2025 from 37% in January 2024.
Historically, technology reporter and consultant Shelly Palmer explains, when women represent most users for any technology platform, there is “true mass market adoption”.
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