There are ambitious plans. Then there is this.

According to reporting by The Information, OpenAI expects to reach $100 billion in annual revenue by 2028. For context, the company is projected to cross around $13 billion in revenue in 2025. So we’re talking about going from roughly $10B → $100B in just three years.

I tried looking for another company in roughly the last 50 years that did that. None turned up.

Yes, there have been fast growers. Moderna during the pandemic. Google in the early 2000s. Uber in the mid-2010s. But no one has taken revenue from this level to that level this fast.

So the real question isn’t “Is AI big?” We’ve already answered that.
The real question is:

What happens if OpenAI actually hits these numbers and what happens if it doesn’t?

The Stakes Are Higher Than Most People Realize

OpenAI isn’t just building ChatGPT subscriptions. It’s also building massive compute infrastructure — the supercomputers that power GPT models.

And the scale is jaw-dropping.

Recent announcements suggest OpenAI’s hardware partnerships with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom could involve around $1.3 trillion worth of chips and compute build-outs over the next decade.

That kind of investment works only if:

• OpenAI keeps growing
• Fast enough to justify the spend
• And fast enough to keep investor confidence high

If it misses these projections, even by a reasonable margin, OpenAI wouldn’t just trim expenses. It might need to slow down its entire compute expansion strategy — which is the backbone of its ability to build more advanced AI models.

And that’s the first-order effect.

The second-order effect is bigger.

A ton of the broader AI economy — startups, enterprise rollouts, chip makers, data center infrastructure, VC funds, sovereign investment — assumes that OpenAI’s value will materialize fast. These are leveraged bets, not slow “let’s wait and see” bets.

If reality doesn’t match the pace investors priced in, we’ve seen this movie before.

That’s how booms turn into busts.

Yes, OpenAI’s Current Growth Is Wild

OpenAI is growing revenue at around 3× per year right now. For comparison:

Only Google is a true “software business” analog here and even Google took a decade to go from $10B → $100B.

OpenAI is targeting three years.

That’s not just optimistic. It’s historically unprecedented.

So Where Would This Revenue Come From?

ChatGPT subscriptions alone won’t get them there. Even OpenAI says so.

They expect around $50B of 2028 revenue to come from ChatGPT-type offerings, which implies scaling to something like 200+ million paid users. The free tier becomes the acquisition engine, but that only works if they turn ChatGPT into the default interface for:

• Search
• Shopping
• Work productivity
• Personal assistance
• Coding
• Enterprise workflows

That means going straight after Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, not just selling API access.

But the bigger bet is productivity.

If AI can actually increase knowledge-work productivity by even 10%, and OpenAI captures 10% of that value, the global revenue opportunity is easily over $200B per year.

The question is not whether that’s possible.
The question is how fast adoption can happen at the scale of Fortune 500 workflows, procurement, compliance, governance, and IT complexity.

That’s rarely fast.

So… Can OpenAI Do It?

The outside view (history, data, precedent) says:
Probably not at this speed.

Companies simply don’t scale revenue this quickly from a $10B base.

But the inside view (what’s happening on the ground) says:
This industry is different. And OpenAI is currently running ahead of everyone else.

So both of these things can be true at once:

• It is possible for OpenAI to hit $100B.
• Hitting it by 2028 would be one of the fastest business scale-ups in history.

And if it doesn’t hit that number?

Maybe it lands at $50B. Or $60B.

Still massive. Still industry-defining.
But a miss could mean:

• Slower supercomputer expansion
• Delayed model breakthroughs
• Tighter capital markets for AI startups
• And a general cooling of the current AI mania

In other words:

Even a “failure” here would still look like success.
Just… less explosive success.

The Real Thing to Watch

Not press releases.
Not conference keynotes.
Not hype videos.

Watch the quarterly revenue prints.
That’s the pulse of the entire AI era.

If OpenAI keeps up the 3× trajectory?
We are entering a tech shift on the scale of the internet.

If it slows earlier than expected?
The glow dims but the story doesn’t end.

Either way, this is the most interesting business growth experiment happening on the planet.

And we’re watching it in real time.