OpenAI's own financial forecast, seen by the FT, projects $278 billion in cumulative cash burn through 2030 against a targeted tenfold revenue jump to $350 billion

2026-09-18 · part of OpenAI IPO

What happened

A company presentation seen by the Financial Times shows OpenAI forecasting $278 billion in cumulative cash burn between 2026 and 2030 — driven mainly by ~$856 billion in compute/infrastructure spending over the same period — while projecting revenue will grow tenfold, from $36 billion this year to $350 billion in 2030 (cumulative revenue of $840 billion through decade's end). The same reporting notes OpenAI is on track to exhaust the $122 billion it raised in March (at an $852 billion valuation) by 2028, ahead of the fresh $1.2 trillion-plus round this thread already logged on 09-16 as in early talks. This is the first hard cash-burn figure this thread has carried alongside the valuation/round-size chatter it has tracked since June — a concrete answer to how OpenAI itself models the gap between fundraising pace and spend. (Reuters, via Investing.com, [Financial Times, cited])

Sources 1

Reuters, via Investing.com investing.com mixed 0.536

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