OpenAI shifts focus to business-oriented products for profitability

OpenAI Pivots to Business Customers in Race for AI Profitability

The same ChatGPT that helped OpenAI’s chief financial officer Sarah Friar prepare a tilapia recipe for a recent Sunday dinner is now handling her most mundane workplace tasks—summarizing emails and Slack messages. This dual utility represents the crossroads where OpenAI currently stands, as the company increasingly pivots toward business-oriented products while scaling back consumer offerings in pursuit of profitability.

OpenAI has announced plans to introduce a new artificial intelligence model specifically designed for “high-value professional work,” intensifying competition with rival Anthropic for corporate clients looking to integrate AI assistants into their workplaces.

“You’ll see a new model coming from us in short order. We feel very excited about it,” Friar told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Despite boasting over 900 million weekly ChatGPT users, Friar acknowledged that approximately 95% of them use the service free of charge. This massive user base builds valuable habits and reliance on OpenAI’s technology, but it also strains the costly computing infrastructure required to power these AI systems—highlighting the urgent need for paying business customers.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for OpenAI, valued at $852 billion, and its competitor Anthropic, valued at $380 billion. Both San Francisco-based AI research laboratories currently operate at a loss, creating fierce competition to generate revenue as they position themselves for potential public offerings.

The shift toward business applications has led OpenAI to abandon some high-profile consumer initiatives, including the AI video generator app Sora. “I think it was a little heartbreaking, but we’re like, OK, it’s not the main event right now,” Friar explained. “We need to make sure that our new model that’s coming has enough compute.”

OpenAI’s forthcoming model, codenamed Spud, is being touted as its “smartest model yet” with “stronger reasoning, better understanding of intent and dependencies, better follow-through and more reliable output in production.” This release will compete directly with Anthropic’s new Claude Mythos, which the company claims is so powerful that it’s limiting access to select customers due to its apparent ability to outperform human cybersecurity experts.

The competitive landscape continues to evolve rapidly. Anthropic recently released Opus 4.7, described as its most powerful “generally available” model, while OpenAI countered with GPT-Franklin, named after scientist Rosalind Franklin, designed specifically for drug discovery and life sciences research.

The business strategy shift represents a dramatic turnaround from late last year, when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was focused on consumer-facing initiatives like a now-defunct Sora partnership with Disney, plans to sell ads on ChatGPT, and even considerations about allowing ChatGPT to engage in adult content with paid users.

Friar reported that business customers accounted for about 20% of OpenAI’s revenue when she joined in 2024. That figure has already grown to 40% and is expected to reach half of the company’s sales by year-end.

Reinforcing this corporate focus, OpenAI hired former Slack CEO Denise Dresser three months ago as its first chief revenue officer. Dresser has been meeting extensively with corporate leaders to position OpenAI as the premier platform for workplaces implementing AI agents to automate computer-based tasks.

“It’s really clear to me that companies are past the experimentation phase and they’re into using AI to do real work,” Dresser said. “Leaders at companies are recognizing that AI is probably the most consequential shift of their lifetime.”

The competition between OpenAI and Anthropic has intensified, with Anthropic claiming annualized revenues of $30 billion—higher than OpenAI’s reported figures, though the companies measure differently. Friar and Dresser suggest Anthropic’s number may be inflated by not accounting for revenue shared with cloud computing providers Amazon and Google.

Luke Emberson, a researcher at nonprofit Epoch AI, noted, “They’re likely quite close. Certainly the trends show Anthropic is growing much faster than OpenAI. If that continues, they’re likely to cross soon.”

The urgency of the situation was evident in a memo Dresser sent to OpenAI employees on Sunday, acknowledging Anthropic’s early advantage in coding applications while expressing confidence in OpenAI’s structural advantages as AI usage expands beyond software developers.

Critics like author Ed Zitron warn of a potential “subprime AI crisis,” noting that both companies impose service tiers favoring premium users while smaller startups become increasingly dependent on their AI tools. “People built their lives and they built their businesses on top of these companies that, as they try and save money, will start turning the screws,” Zitron cautioned.

The fundamental challenge facing both AI leaders is the enormous expense of their technology—particularly the electricity-hungry AI computing infrastructure required to sustain operations. With both companies potentially requiring $100-200 billion annually “just to keep breathing,” according to Zitron, the race for sustainable business models has never been more urgent.