this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
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OpenAI falling short of their ad revenue projections by 90% (futurism.com)
submitted 15 hours ago by rimu@piefed.social to c/technology@piefed.social
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OpenAI wants you to believe that by 2030, it’ll be raking in $100 billion a year just from ads alone - even though it’s currently struggling to reach just $1 billion.

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[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 34 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

nearing 1 of 100 is 99% short, is it not?

[–] rimu@piefed.social 26 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

The 100 bn is "by 2030". I guess their interim target for this year is much less than 100. Maybe the target is $10 billion and they achieved $1 billion.

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 18 points 14 hours ago

Yeah this whole thing is missing some crucial information.

The paragraph quoted in the post makes it sound like they are near $1b in revenue but i think they're just speaking rhetorically, "you want 100? You can't even get 1!"

In 2026, Emarketer projects that the combination of OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon will bring in under $1 billion in ad revenue. For context, OpenAI had projected that its AI ad revenue alone would hit $2.5 billion by the end of this year.

This makes it sound like openai is projected to make $250m this year, if they're 90% short of revenue projections for this year. That's a full 25% of the $1b total ad revenue that OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon make combined. Which is reasonable, but it does make their projections seem absolutely farcical. At least to me, but i don't know finances.

It would be good to check rhe original analysis the article cites but it's paywalled and begins with the same misleading comparison of 2030 to now.