Just seven years after being founded, OpenAI’s annual run rate—a measure of one month’s revenue multiplied by 12—hit the $2 billion revenue mark in December 2023, two people familiar with the knowledge told the Financial Times. That puts the AI startup among a handful of companies, including Google and Meta, to have made billions in revenue within just a decade of existence.
For Google, specifically, it took five years to make its first billion in revenue, according to a report by City Index, a financial services firm. Meta, meanwhile, hit its first billion in six years. In fact, one of the fastest companies to make its first billion wasn’t one of the Big Tech names at all—Booking Holdings, which owns Booking.com and Kayak, generated $1 billion in just three years.
