OpenAI is entering a more difficult phase of the AI race. The company missed internal revenue goals for the first quarter of 2026, while earlier ChatGPT user growth targets also went unmet.
The concern is not only that growth is slowing. It is that the slowdown is arriving while OpenAI is committed to enormous future spending, faces sharper competition from Google and Anthropic, and is weighing the timing of a potential IPO.
Growth targets are getting harder to hit
According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI missed an internal revenue target for the first quarter of 2026. The Information previously reported that ChatGPT had fallen short of user growth goals. The company also missed an internal target of one billion weekly active users by the end of 2025.
Those missed targets matter because OpenAI's business depends on fast adoption across consumer, developer, coding, and enterprise use cases. ChatGPT remains central to the company's public identity, but the source article points to churn rates among ChatGPT subscribers as another concern inside the business.
Competition is part of the explanation. Google's Gemini chatbot has been growing quickly, and Anthropic's revenue has surged. The source says Anthropic has nearly closed the gap with OpenAI despite being founded five years later.
According to the WSJ, Anthropic has been taking market share from OpenAI particularly in coding and enterprise markets. Those are valuable areas because they are tied to recurring business use and technical workflows, not just casual consumer experimentation.
Anthropic and Google are changing the market
OpenAI's challenge is no longer simply to expand the overall market for AI assistants. It must also defend its position against rivals that are improving their products and winning customers in specific categories.
Google Gemini represents pressure from a technology giant with a fast-growing chatbot. Anthropic represents pressure from a younger AI company that has become especially relevant in coding and enterprise markets. Together, they make OpenAI's missed targets more significant than a temporary accounting issue.
The source article identifies several competitive pressure points:
- Google's Gemini chatbot is growing rapidly.
- Anthropic's revenue is rising quickly.
- Anthropic has nearly closed the gap with OpenAI despite being founded five years later.
- Anthropic is reportedly taking market share in coding and enterprise markets.
- ChatGPT subscriber churn rates are raising concerns.
For OpenAI, that combination creates a strategic problem. Revenue goals become harder to meet if users and companies have credible alternatives. User growth becomes harder to sustain if subscribers leave or shift part of their work to competing AI tools.
Compute commitments raise the stakes
The timing is especially difficult because OpenAI has very large future infrastructure obligations. CEO Sam Altman locked the company into roughly $600 billion in future data center spending through deals struck last year.
That level of commitment assumes that demand for OpenAI's products and services will keep expanding. The company expects to burn through $25 billion in cash in 2026 against a revenue target of $30 billion. The previous year brought roughly $13 billion in revenue and $8 billion in losses.
Those figures show why internal debate over spending has become important. If revenue grows quickly, compute capacity can support more products, more customers, and more model development. If revenue growth disappoints, the same commitments become a heavier burden.
CFO Sarah Friar has raised internal concerns about whether OpenAI can meet its future computing contracts if revenue does not grow fast enough, according to the WSJ. The board has also questioned Altman's strategy of securing more compute capacity.
Altman and Friar dismissed reports of disagreements in a joint statement. Still, the source describes internal tension around the scale and timing of OpenAI's spending plans.
The IPO question is unresolved
OpenAI is also facing disagreement over when it should go public. According to The Information, Altman wants to accelerate an IPO. Friar, however, does not believe the company will be ready to handle the reporting requirements of a public company in 2026.
That divide reflects the larger tension around OpenAI's business. A public offering could create another way to support ambitious growth plans, but it would also bring more scrutiny. Missed revenue targets, large losses, subscriber churn concerns, and future compute contracts would all matter to public-market investors.
OpenAI recently raised $122 billion, described in the source as the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history. According to the WSJ, that money could be spent within three years if OpenAI reaches its ambitious revenue targets, and parts of the funding are tied to specific conditions.
The company does have positive signals. The coding tool Codex is gaining traction, and the recently released GPT-5.5 leads several industry benchmarks. Those developments may help in areas where enterprise and developer adoption are especially important.
But other pressures remain. An ongoing lawsuit from Elon Musk against Altman and the unexpected medical leave of Altman's deputy Fidji Simo are also weighing on the company as it approaches a potential IPO.
What this means for OpenAI
The picture from the source is not one of collapse. It is a picture of a company moving from rapid expansion into a more demanding phase, where growth targets, infrastructure spending, competition, and public-market readiness all interact.
OpenAI still has major funding, widely used products, Codex traction, and benchmark strength with GPT-5.5. At the same time, Google Gemini and Anthropic are making the market less predictable, and OpenAI's spending commitments leave less room for weak revenue performance.
The central question is whether OpenAI can turn its technical lead and product demand into enough revenue growth to support its data center strategy. If it can, the compute commitments may look like a necessary bet. If it cannot, the missed first-quarter 2026 revenue target may be remembered as an early sign that the AI race had become more financially complicated.