Character.ai vs OpenAI: Revenue, Profit and Business Model
Character.ai reported $30M of revenue in FY2025 and — of net income. OpenAI reported $20B of revenue in FY2025 and — of net income.
Latest financial snapshot
Character.ai
- Latest revenue
- $30M (FY2025)
- Net income
- —
- Net margin
- 0.0%
- Revenue growth
- -6.8% a year, FY2024–FY2025
OpenAI
- Latest revenue
- $20B (FY2025)
- Net income
- —
- Net margin
- 0.0%
- Revenue growth
- +216.2% a year, FY2023–FY2025
Financial summary
Character.ai
Character.ai is private and discloses little. Known figures: a $43 million seed round, a $150 million Series A in March 2023 at a $1 billion valuation (about $193 million raised in total), and the August 2024 Google transaction, reported at about $2.7 billion, which bought out investors at a price implying a valuation of roughly $2.5 billion. The company said in 2025 that revenue was running above $30 million a year. Third-party estimates, such as $32.2 million for 2024 from app-market trackers, are unaudited. Profitability and cash balance have not been disclosed.
OpenAI
OpenAI reports revenue as annualized run rate rather than audited GAAP figures. The company says it reached $1 billion of revenue within a year of launching ChatGPT, was generating about $1 billion per quarter by the end of 2024, and passed $20 billion of annualized revenue by the end of 2025. Axios reported the run rate was nearing $70 billion at the end of September 2026. Funding has scaled alongside: $110 billion announced in February 2026 at a $730 billion pre-money valuation grew to $122 billion committed at $852 billion post-money by March 31, 2026, anchored by Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank. An employee tender of about $7 billion followed in August 2026 at the same valuation. The company remains unprofitable because compute spending outpaces revenue.
Revenue and profit by year
Character.ai
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $30M | — | 0.0% | -6.8% | Source |
| FY2024 | $32.2M | — | 0.0% | — | Source |
OpenAI
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $20B | — | 0.0% | +400.0% | Source |
| FY2024 | $4B | — | 0.0% | +100.0% | Source |
| FY2023 | $2B | — | 0.0% | — | Source |
Where the revenue comes from
Character.ai
No segment breakdown is published.
OpenAI
- ChatGPT SubscriptionsMajor
Consumer, team, business, education, and enterprise subscriptions.
- API UsageMajor
Usage-based developer and enterprise model access through OpenAI APIs.
- Enterprise PlatformGrowing
Business deployments, governance, custom workflows, and platform services.
- Partnerships and LicensingEmerging
Strategic licensing, infrastructure partnerships, commerce, and outcome-based AI workflows.
Business model and strategy
Character.ai
How it makes money
Character.ai is a freemium consumer app. Creating characters and chatting with them is free, and the company earns money in two ways. The first is c.ai+, a subscription launched in May 2023 at $9.99 a month. Subscribers get priority access when servers are busy, faster replies, longer memory and early access to features.
Growth strategy
Since June 2025 CEO Karandeep Anand has moved Character.ai from the founders' goal of personalised superintelligence to AI entertainment. The plan has three parts: build on open-source models instead of training its own frontier models; widen the product from one-to-one chat to a social feed, Scenes, Streams, AvatarFX video and Stories;
Competitive advantage
Character.ai's edge is its library of user-made characters and the habits of the community that built it. Millions of characters exist on the platform, created and refined by users for free, and in 2025 the company said people spent about 75 minutes a day in the app. General assistants can role-play, but they do not offer a catalogue of ready-made personas with their own followings.
OpenAI
How it makes money
OpenAI earns revenue in three main ways. First, ChatGPT subscriptions: consumer tiers such as Plus and Pro, plus Business, Enterprise and Edu seats sold to organizations. Second, the API platform, where developers and companies pay per token to build OpenAI models (GPT, reasoning, image, audio and embeddings) into their own software.
Growth strategy
OpenAI is growing on four fronts: selling ChatGPT and Codex into enterprises, turning ChatGPT into a broader 'super app' with agents, shopping and apps inside the chat, building its own compute through the Stargate data center program and chip partnerships, and moving into hardware through the 2025 acquisition of Jony Ive's io.
Competitive advantage
OpenAI's advantage is distribution plus scale. ChatGPT is the most widely used AI assistant, with OpenAI citing more than 900 million weekly users in February 2026, which gives it a direct consumer channel that rivals have to buy or build.
Questions about Character.ai vs OpenAI
Which company has higher revenue — Character.ai or OpenAI?
Character.ai reported $30.0M (FY2025), while OpenAI reported $20.0B (FY2025). By last reported revenue, OpenAI is the larger business, with Character.ai reporting a smaller revenue base.
Which is more financially efficient — Character.ai or OpenAI?
Character.ai generates $231k / employee in revenue per employee, while OpenAI generates $4.44M / employee. OpenAI shows higher revenue efficiency per headcount, though this reflects business model differences — capital-light software companies routinely outperform labour-intensive manufacturers on this metric.
How do Character.ai and OpenAI make money?
Character.ai and OpenAI generate revenue in fundamentally different ways. Character.ai: Character. OpenAI: OpenAI earns revenue in three main ways.
Is Character.ai bigger than OpenAI?
By last reported revenue, OpenAI ($20.0B (FY2025)) is the larger company compared to Character.ai ($30.0M (FY2025)). Revenue scale is one dimension of size — market capitalisation, employee count, and geographic reach are also relevant depending on the context.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Character.ai vs OpenAI overview