OpenAI fell short of internal revenue goals for the first quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, pressure from competitors like Anthropic and Google is mounting, and tensions inside the company over massive spending commitments are growing.
OpenAI recently missed an internal revenue target for the first quarter of 2026, according to the Wall Street Journal. Before that, ChatGPT had already fallen short of user growth goals, The Information reported. An internal target of one billion weekly active users by the end of 2025 was also missed.
The main culprits appear to be the rapid growth of Google's Gemini chatbot and Anthropic's surging revenue - the company has nearly closed the gap with OpenAI despite being founded five years later. According to the WSJ, Anthropic has been taking market share from OpenAI particularly in coding and enterprise markets. Churn rates among ChatGPT subscribers are also raising concerns.
Slowing growth collides with massive spending commitments
The missed targets come at a particularly bad time. CEO Sam Altman locked OpenAI into roughly $600 billion in future data center spending through deals struck last year. The company expects to burn through $25 billion in cash in 2026 against a revenue target of $30 billion, following roughly $13 billion in revenue and $8 billion in losses the previous year.
