Podcast Summary: "OpenAI's $100B Raise Fueled by ChatGPT $3B Fire"

Podcast: The Last Invention is AI
Host: The Last Invention is AI
Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Overview

This episode explores the explosive financial trajectory of OpenAI, spotlighting the company’s milestone of $3 billion in consumer spending through ChatGPT’s mobile app and OpenAI’s ambitious $100 billion capital raise at an $830 billion valuation. The discussion dives into spending patterns, growth trends, competitive pressures, and what OpenAI plans to do with its war chest—potentially charting a course that will shape the future of artificial intelligence, business, and society.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. ChatGPT Mobile App’s Consumer Spending Milestone

[03:11 - 09:59]

$3 Billion Record: ChatGPT’s mobile app reached $3 billion in total consumer spending across iOS and Android since its 2023 launch.
- “This is the total spending on iOS and Android devices since it launched back in 2023. Right. So this isn't like annual or. This isn't…monthly recurring revenue tied to this. This is just total spending…” [04:12]
Breakdown of Growth:
- 2023: $42 million
- 2024: $487 million
- 2025: ~$2.84 billion (approx. 408% YoY increase from 2024)
Product Launch Impact:
- Android app (July 2023): Modest revenue compared to later spikes.
- Release of Advanced Voice Mode (July 2024): Drove steady growth.
- GPT-4.5 (Feb 2025): “Smash success,” monthly revenue doubled from $100M to $200M in two months.
- GPT-5 Launch (Aug 2025): Plateaued revenue, minor bump followed by decline.
Market Saturation vs. Competition:
- Despite being one of the most used apps, revenue plateaued at around $250M/month.
- “Some people would say the market was sort of saturated… I think that it was the release of some big competitors, Google Gemini in particular, and maybe Claude gave them a little bit of a, you know, eight away at a little bit of this.” [08:32]
Memorable Stat:
- “Consumers spent about $2.84 billion on Chat GPT this year. And that's about a 408% increase year over year from the 487 million spent in 2024.” [10:56]

2. OpenAI’s $100 Billion Funding Ambition

[12:10 - 16:01]

Major Raise & Valuation:
- OpenAI seeking $100B from investors, targeting an $830B valuation (per Wall Street Journal sources).
- “They are currently looking at sovereign wealth funds to invest in this deal.” [12:44]
- The Information previously leaked a $750B valuation; OpenAI’s price tag has climbed in subsequent reporting.
Investor Dynamics:
- Following industry trend; Anthropic recently also targeted sovereign wealth funds.
- “There was kind of this awkward moment where the CEO of Anthropic was like, yeah, like we, sometimes we have to work with dictators or people we don't agree with, but you know, we got to grow the company.” [13:13]
- Unusual for tech to openly acknowledge ethical dilemmas about funding sources.
Why Raise So Much?
- “OpenAI has literally committed to spending trillions of dollars… a lot of it is on AI and a lot of it is on the researchers, but a ton of that money is on data centers and compute…” [14:00]
IPO & Strategic Partnerships:
- Rumored IPO in the pipeline for further capital.
- Amazon partnership: Recent $10B investment deal with more anticipated.
Current Revenue:
- Reported annual run rate of about $20B.
- Consumer app revenue is just one piece; major enterprise and partnership revenues supplement this.

3. Competitive Pressures & Market Ceilings

[09:45 - 11:45, 15:45 - 16:35]

Market Ceiling Observed:
- The plateau in app revenue may reflect either a market cap or competitive disruption.
- Key competitor: Google Gemini had a significant slowing effect on ChatGPT’s momentum.
- “It feels like for, you know, it's going to be close to a year that, that their revenue has kind of flatlined on, on, on their apps and hopefully this isn't something that drags into other and other things…” [09:55]

4. The Road Ahead — How OpenAI Will Spend Big

[16:02 - End]

Strategic Spend:
- Data centers, compute, research, and potential foray into hardware (rumored Johnny Ive collaboration).
- “A lot of this AI is going to go to power humanoid robots. There's a lot of exciting things that this technology will be going into and this money will be spent on.” [16:47]
Open Questions:
- Can OpenAI keep raising ever-larger rounds, or will it hit a “ceiling” the way app revenue has?
- Will consumer, enterprise, and hardware streams diversify the business enough for sustainable, long-term growth?
- How will funding sources and partnerships (including those with problematic actors) affect the company’s future?

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“GPT 4.5 was a very popular product in April. Then the next month it went over $200 million. So basically, in two months from February to April, we went from 100 million to over $200 million in monthly revenue.” [07:32]
“Some people would say the market was sort of saturated… I personally actually don't subscribe to that. I think that there's a lot more growth that they could see.” [08:30]
“There's definitely, like, the enterprise that is using their APIs are spending way more money than this…so they have a lot of, you know, other revenue sources. It's not like this is the only money they can make.” [09:13]
“OpenAI has literally committed to spending trillions of dollars making deals all around the world to build. You know, a lot of it is on AI and a lot of it is on the researchers, but a ton of that money is on data centers and compute…” [14:02]
“It'll be interesting to see if they can just continue to raise more and more money or if there's going to be a ceiling on how much they can raise, like it feels like there was a ceiling on the growth rate on their app revenue.” [16:25]

Timestamps for Important Segments

03:11 – ChatGPT app crosses $3B in consumer spending
06:12 – Revenue spikes from GPT-4.5 release
08:32 – Competition (Google Gemini’s impact)
10:56 – 408% YoY growth statistic
12:10 – OpenAI’s $100B raise and $830B valuation
13:13 – Anthropic’s funding/ethical comment
14:02 – Where OpenAI’s money is going: “spending trillions”
15:12 – Rumors of IPO and strategic partnerships
16:02 – Big picture: how the money will be used, potential ceilings

Tone and Style

The speaker maintains a pacey, detail-oriented, and slightly informal tone. There is enthusiasm, alongside a measured skepticism regarding market saturation and the future of AI business models. The analysis is numbers-driven but occasionally punctuated by casual commentary and industry anecdotes.

Conclusion

This episode paints a high-stakes portrait of OpenAI at the bleeding edge of technological and financial ambition. While its growth metrics are staggering, clouds of competition, market constraints, and ethical funding issues loom, all as OpenAI seeks to build the infrastructure for artificial general intelligence and more. The host promises continued coverage as this story—and the future of AI—rapidly unfolds.

Transcript

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Credits for well qualified customers plus tax and $35 device connection charge credits and imbalance due if you pay off earlier accounts financing agreement 256 gigs, $830 eligible board in a new line, $100 plus a month plan without our PayPal taxes and fees required. Check out 15 minutes or less per line. Visit t mobile.com chat GPT's mobile app has just hit a new record of $3 billion in consumer spending and alongside that, OpenAI is reportedly trying to raise a hundred billion dollars more at a 830 billion dollar valuation. So today on the podcast we're going to be breaking down everything that OpenAI is planning, where we see this going in the future, what this hundred billion dollars is going to be used for and where they're saying they're going to be. This time next year we're going to get into a whole bunch of OpenAI by the numbers kind, the history of where they've been and where they're going. Before we do that, I wanted to say that this episode is sponsored by Delve. If your company needs help with SOC2, HIPAA or GDPR, Delve is an incredible solution. They use AI agents to automate compliance end to end. They collect evidence, they fill out security questionnaires, they customize controls to your actual business so you can get compliance in days, not months. And you also get one on one slack support from real security experts who respond fast. Over a thousand fast growing companies trust Delve, close deals faster and stay compliant as they scale. So if you're interested you can book a demo@delve.com and I'll also leave a link in the description to Delve. All right, let's Talk first about ChatGPT's mobile app, new record in how much spending, consumer spending is happening on the app, which is $3 billion, according to an estimate from App Intelligence provider App figures. This is the total spending on iOS and Android devices since it launched back in 2023. Right. So this isn't like annual or. This isn't. There's no sort of like monthly recurring revenue tied to this. This is just total spending, which could include a lot of people that might have paid and stopped paying, switched to a free tier. And there are some interesting things with these numbers and kind of the growth rate on the numbers. One of the biggest things I'm seeing as I'm looking at a chart of this is when they first released their Android app back in July of 2023. So May 2023, the iOS app came out. July, their Android app came out. Like if you look at a chart, there's basically no revenue or it's so small compared to what, for over a year, May to May. So that's the entire first year of the app. I mean, they're not even cracking $50 million in monthly recurring revenue or monthly revenue. And that's when GPT4O was first released. That's when I first feel like they kind of got to maybe somewhere, somewhere above 25 million, not even 50 million. They did see a little bit of a spike when Advanced Voice Mode came out in July of last year. And I think the time that they made kind of the biggest movement. And here's one other thing that I will point out that's interesting about this. It's not really about when a feature comes out and seen a spike. It's kind of. You want to look at the months after a feature comes out to see how successful that feature is, because as people are trying it, they're able to show it to people. The word of mouth grows and it's the features that lead the growth. And I would say anytime that there's. You see growth before a feature. So it's kind of like hype. You're. You're going to. Essentially, the product has a chance to disappoint if it doesn't. If the feature doesn't live up to the hype. And I'll tell you when this happens, which looks sort of painful and why I think OpenAI had kind of announced a code red. So essentially you see steady growth after the Advanced Voice Mode came out, that was obviously an incredible feature. And you see steady growth all the way, you know, through February of January of 2025. So that's kind of, you know, the lead up from Advanced Voice Mode in July all the way to February, we see steady growth going from somewhere around, I would say, 50 million to $100 million in monthly revenue that it was making. And in February is when GPT4.5 came out. So this was a great product. GPT4.5 was kind of like, you know, the biggest flagship model. Everyone expected that to be GPT5, but it was 4.5. And following that, we actually saw some insane growth. So February was at about $100 million. It almost doubled by March to. Or it went up, like, to $150 million by the next month. So you can see GPT 4.5 was a very popular product in April. Then the next month it went over $200 million. So basically, in two months from February to April, we went from 100 million to over $200 million in monthly revenue. GPT 4.5 was a smash success, I would say, by, you know, by all metrics. And. And of course, then we're getting into the release of GPT5. It's. It's coming up soon because that came in August of the same year. But what you will notice is May, June, July, August was a plateau. So we saw this, like, huge kind of growth with GPT4.5, there was a plateau leading up to GPT5, so that by the time GPT5 came around, they, you know, like they'd been getting close to 300 million. But it seems like it went up from maybe like 280 back down to 250 million when GPT5 came up. And there was a slight growth for the two months following GPT5, September and October, where it feels like it got to around 380 million, but the next month, in November of this year, so, you know, last month it saw another dip. So we see basically from May of this year till November of this year, OpenAI has been struggling on iOS and Android combined to crack anything over $250 million in monthly revenue. Now, I mean, maybe there's an argument to be made about the size of the market using these tools or the price point or. I think there's a lot of different things. And I will also say that this, you know, this $250 million, this is only the revenue that is being generated from the app. So there's definitely, like, the enterprise that is using their APIs are spending way more money than this. They have a lot of partnerships with large corporations, so they have a lot of, you know, other revenue sources. It's not like this is the only money they can make. But, but it is interesting that they have really been struggling to grow. You know, some people would say the market was sort of saturated. One thing that's interesting about all of this is that ChatGPT was one of the most downloaded used apps of the year. And so for, for the, you know, one of the biggest apps, basically it feels like there might, they might have hit a ceiling on what they can squeeze out of the market. So that's like some people's theory. I personally actually don't subscribe to that. I think that there's a lot more growth that they could see. See, I think that it was the release of some big competitors, Google Gemini in particular, and maybe Claude gave them a little bit of a, you know, eight away at a little bit of this. But I think Google Gemini was the biggest slow down of their growth rate that they would have seen more growth. And so this is kind of what Sam Altman's concerned about. It feels like for, you know, it's going to be close to a year that, that their revenue has kind of flatlined on, on, on their apps and hopefully this isn't something that drags into other and other things here. So I think what's notable is that the bulk of all of the spending that did Happen, the total $3 billion took place this year worldwide. Consumers spent about $2.84 billion on Chat GPT this year. And that's about a 408% increase year over year from the 487 million spent in 2024. What I, what I'll also say is that in 2023, the app's first year of availability earned about $42 million. So 42 million the first year, 487 million the next year, and then this year $2.4 billion. So the growth rate is incredible. They have made an incredible amount of money. But I will say the, you know, the growth rate isn't, it feels like it has plateaued. And I mean plateauing at two, two and a half billion dollars is still amazing per year, but it's just, it does, you're not seeing kind of like an uptrend like we saw in the past. All right, let's talk about what's going on with OpenAI's money that they're currently raising. The Wall Street Journal initially reported on this. They had some anonymous sources that said that OpenAI is currently trying to raise $100 billion to, you know, make them worth $830 billion. That'd be their valuation. They're trying to do it by the end of the first quarter next year and they are currently looking at sovereign wealth funds to invest in this deal. Now we saw that in the most recent deal that Anthropic raised, they also went to sovereign wealth funds. And there was kind of this awkward moment where the CEO of Anthropic was like, yeah, like we, sometimes we have to work with dictators or people we don't agree with, but you know, we got to grow the company. And I don't know, this seemed kind of like a weird comment to make about someone that's giving you $1 billion. The information was the first one to report the deal, although they said that OpenAI was trying to get a $750 billion price tag. I've actually, we've seen this in the past with deals where there's kind of these like pre leaks before the deal happens and the valuation goes up after the first leak. So I do think this is, this is going to, you know, come at a time when OpenAI is already saying that they're going to spend trillions of dollars. Like OpenAI has literally committed to spending trillions of dollars making deals all around the world to build. You know, a lot of it is on AI and a lot of it is on the researchers, but a ton of that money is on data centers and compute and it's going to be, you know, a really incredible time to, to see them try to grow. But I mean if they're, they've committed to spending trillions and they're, you know, sitting here trying to raise a hundred billion dollars, they need to raise a lot more and they need their company to make a lot more. And of course this is coming as there's a ton of competition. I think OpenAI has also been rumored to be working on IPO that is kind of their next way to raise tens of billions of dollars and fund their development efforts. Because right now it's said that they're making an annual run rate revenue of about $20 billion. So there's also rumors that they are talking with Amazon on some deals. And we know that they recently did a 10 billion dollar investment deal with Amazon. So it seems like there is, you know, kind of more of those deals coming from institutions as well. Overall, this is a huge time for OpenAI. We're excited to follow them, see what they are spending the money on development and really building out compute that. I think, you know, we have a lot of other exciting things on the horizon. Whether they're working with Johnny I've on hardware devices, we know that a lot of this AI is going to go to power humanoid robots. There's a lot of exciting things that this technology will be going into and this money will be spent on. It'll be interesting to see if they can just continue to raise more and more money or if there's going to be a ceiling on how much they can raise. Like it feels like there was a ceiling on the growth rate on their app revenue, how much are actually able to get out of consumers in certain mediums. So that is definitely something interesting to follow. Thanks so much for tuning to the podcast. As always, make sure to go check out the sponsor of the show, delve@delve.com There's a link in the description. Make sure to leave a rating and review for the show if you appreciated it and I will catch you in the next episode.