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OpenAI's Growth Math Gets a Little Less Magical
And Meta plans to use giant space mirrors to send sunlight to data centers at night
Thomas Smith
April 28, 2026
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OpenAI's Growth Math Gets a Little Less Magical
OpenAI is reportedly running into a very unglamorous problem for a very glamorous company: it is missing internal revenue and user targets while pushing toward an IPO.
Reuters, via StreetInsider and TradingView, says leadership is worried about whether the company can support its huge data-center commitments. The report also says ChatGPT growth has slowed and OpenAI fell short of a goal to reach 1 billion weekly users.
That is the kind of update investors tend to notice. For most of the last two years, the AI story has been about model launches, distribution, and who gets the biggest slice of attention. This version is about capex, conversion, and whether the market's most important private AI company can turn usage into a business that justifies the bill.
Tom’s Take
Since ChatGPT rolled out, OpenAI has been on a pretty magical trajectory—raising over $100 billion without an IPO, building some of this century’s hottest tech, and the like.
There’s also been some magical thinking about the company’s valuation, though! OpenAI only earns around $20 billion in revenue.
For context, pizza delivery is a $17 billion industry. AI is cool, but it doesn’t earn much.
Investors overlooked that while OpenAI was still growing rapidly. Any signs that growth has slowed, though, could have severe consequences—especially going into an IPO.
You can bet that future OpenAI investors will be watching carefully to see if this downward trend continues.
Other AI News
A federal trial began in Oakland over Elon Musk's claim that OpenAI abandoned its nonprofit mission and became a profit-seeking machine, a case that could shape how courts think about the company's governance and obligations.
Reuters reported that Google signed a classified AI deal with the Pentagon, adding more defense work to the list of real customers for frontier models.
OpenAI and Microsoft amended their partnership so OpenAI can serve products across any cloud provider, while Microsoft's license to OpenAI IP becomes non-exclusive -- a meaningful shift in the cloud and distribution fight.
Today's Strangest AI
Meta reportedly signed onto a plan to use satellites to beam infrared light to solar farms at night. It sounds like a pitch from a sci-fi studio memo, but it is being floated as actual infrastructure for AI power demand.