OpenAI vs Scale AI: Revenue, Profit and Business Model
OpenAI reported $20B of revenue in FY2025 and — of net income. Scale AI reported $870M of revenue in FY2024 and — of net income.
Latest financial snapshot
Financial summary
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.
Scale AI
Scale is private and does not publish audited results. Bloomberg reported about $870 million of revenue in 2024 and a target near $2 billion for 2025 before the Meta deal. After OpenAI and Google pulled back, that target looked out of reach, but CEO Jason Droege wrote in early 2026 that 2025 was Scale's biggest revenue year, with more than $1 billion in new business and nearly half of bookings in Q4. The company valued itself at more than $29 billion in the June 2025 Meta transaction, up from $13.8 billion in its May 2024 Series F. Net income has not been disclosed, though Scale says the data business is now profitable.
Revenue and profit by year
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 |
Scale AI
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 | $870M | — | 0.0% | — | Source |
Where the revenue comes from
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.
Scale AI
- Data business
Not disclosed
Training data, RL environments, robotics data and evaluations for AI labs and large technology companies; profitable since the second half of 2025, per the company.
- Applications: enterprise
Not disclosed
Generative AI applications for companies such as Mayo Clinic, BP and Allianz.
- Applications: public sector
Not disclosed
AI programs for the U.S. Department of War and international governments including Qatar, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Business model and strategy
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.
Scale AI
How it makes money
Scale AI earns money in two ways. Its data business charges AI labs and large technology companies for training data, reinforcement learning environments and model evaluations, produced by software pipelines plus a paid contributor network run through Outlier and Remotasks; the company says it has paid contributors more than $1 billion over ten years.
Growth strategy
Scale's 2026 plan, as described by its leadership, is to move technical capabilities from the data business into applications faster, invest in a unified AI-native platform for enterprise and government customers, and expand abroad. It opened or grew offices in New York, London, Washington, D.C., Doha, St.
Competitive advantage
Scale's advantages are scale, track record and government access. It has applied what it calls 15 billion human decisions to train leading models across 150 languages and locales, it runs SEAL benchmarks such as Humanity's Last Exam and SWE-Bench Pro that labs cite at launch, and it holds U.S.
Questions about OpenAI vs Scale AI
Which company has higher revenue — OpenAI or Scale AI, Inc.?
OpenAI reported $20.0B (FY2025), while Scale AI, Inc. reported $870.0M (FY2024). By last reported revenue, OpenAI is the larger business, with Scale AI, Inc. reporting a smaller revenue base. Note: these are from different fiscal years and are not a direct like-for-like comparison.
Which is more financially efficient — OpenAI or Scale AI, Inc.?
OpenAI generates $4.44M / employee in revenue per employee, while Scale AI, Inc. generates $725k / 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 OpenAI and Scale AI, Inc. make money?
OpenAI and Scale AI, Inc. generate revenue in fundamentally different ways. OpenAI: OpenAI earns revenue in three main ways. Scale AI, Inc.: Scale AI earns money in two ways.
Is OpenAI bigger than Scale AI, Inc.?
By last reported revenue, OpenAI ($20.0B (FY2025)) is the larger company compared to Scale AI, Inc. ($870.0M (FY2024)). 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 OpenAI vs Scale AI overview