- OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said the company is “beating our plan at the highest level” and faces a “vertical wall of demand” — rebutting reports it missed internal revenue and user growth targets.
- Friar acknowledged the company has ambitious internal “stretch goals” distinct from public targets, calling that standard CFO practice at any high-growth company.
- She said compute scarcity — not weak demand — is the primary constraint on growth, contradicting reports that she had flagged concerns about computing affordability.
- OpenAI’s coding agent Codex hit 4 million weekly users this month — up from 3 million just two weeks prior — as the company pivots to AI agents and enterprise focus.
What Happened?
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar gave her most direct public rebuttal yet to reports that the company missed internal revenue and user growth targets, telling Bloomberg in an interview Thursday that OpenAI is “beating our plan at the highest level.” Friar acknowledged the existence of internal “stretch goals” that differ from public targets — but said that’s true of every company she’s worked with in her career. On the specific question of computing costs, she rejected the characterization that she had expressed concern about affording future infrastructure, saying the opposite is true: “We’re going up a vertical wall of demand right now. If we’re in places where we’re not hitting targets, I would actually say it’s lack of compute that often is the thing that’s slowing us down.” OpenAI’s Codex coding agent, meanwhile, hit 4 million weekly users this month, up from 3 million just two weeks earlier.
Why It Matters?
OpenAI’s week has been a case study in narrative management under intense public scrutiny. The initial WSJ report sent OpenAI-linked stocks — Oracle, SoftBank, CoreWeave — into sharp selloffs, erasing billions in market value. The company’s rapid pushback (“prime clickbait,” “firing on all cylinders”) and now Friar’s direct interview represent an attempt to restore investor confidence ahead of a critical IPO. But the rebuttal also highlights a genuine tension: OpenAI is competing simultaneously with Anthropic (eyeing a $900B+ valuation) and Google (which just posted 63% cloud growth driven by AI), while burning enormous capital on infrastructure. Friar’s framing — that demand is the constraint, not supply — is the most bullish possible interpretation of OpenAI’s position, and markets will test it against actual results.
What’s Next?
OpenAI completed a $122 billion funding round in March at an $852 billion valuation and is expected to IPO as soon as this year. Anthropic is now entertaining offers at over $900 billion, potentially leapfrogging OpenAI in private market valuation for the first time. The race for compute — with OpenAI targeting $600 billion in infrastructure spending by 2030 — means both companies are locked in a capital-raising arms race where slowing revenue growth is existential, not just embarrassing. Friar’s insistence that the business is on plan will be directly tested when OpenAI next discloses revenue figures, likely in the context of IPO filings.
Source: Bloomberg
