OpenAI to focus on ‘practical adoption’ in 2026, says finance chief Sarah Friar

OpenAI will make 2026 its year of “practical adoption,” the artificial intelligence startup’s finance chief said in a blog Sunday.

“The priority is closing the gap between what AI now makes possible and how people, companies, and countries are using it day to day,” OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar wrote. “The opportunity is large and immediate, especially in health, science, and enterprise, where better intelligence translates directly into better outcomes.”

In the blog, Friar laid out how OpenAI views its strategy for driving monetization of its services, like ChatGPT, while securing the compute necessary to power those products, saying that the AI lab’s revenue directly tracks with the availability of its technical infrastructure. OpenAI’s compute grew from 0.2 gigawatts in 2023 to about 1.9 GW in 2025, while the company’s annual revenue run rate grew similarly from $2 billion in 2023 to more than $20 billion last year, Friar said. 

“This is never-before-seen growth at such scale,” she wrote. “And we firmly believe that more compute in these periods would have led to faster customer adoption and monetization.”

Friar’s blog comes as OpenAI and the tech industry’s focus on AI comes under scrutiny for the massive investments necessary to build out the data centers and secure the energy and components required to power this cutting-edge technology that has yet to deliver much revenue returns for investors.

Among those key deals is an agreement between OpenAI and AI chipmaker Nvidia announced in September. Under that agreement, Nvidia said it would commit $100 billion to support the AI startup as it builds and deploys at least 10 GW of Nvidia’s systems.

A gigawatt is a measure of power, and 10 GW is roughly equivalent to the annual power consumption of 8 million U.S. households, according to a CNBC analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration.

But in November, Nvidia told investors there was “no assurance” that its agreement with OpenAI would progress beyond an announcement and to an official contract stage. 

“Securing world-class compute requires commitments made years in advance, and growth does not move in a perfectly smooth line,” wrote Friar, adding that the system requires discipline.

Three years ago, OpenAI relied on a single compute provider, but now it works with a diversified ecosystem, Friar said. 

“We can plan, finance, and deploy capacity with confidence in a market where access to compute defines who can scale,” she wrote.

OpenAI’s business model should scale with its services, Friar said.

“As intelligence moves into scientific research, drug discovery, energy systems, and financial modeling, new economic models will emerge,” she wrote.

The blog comes after OpenAI last week said that it planned to begin testing ads for some ChatGPT users in the U.S. That move comes as OpenAI gears up for a potential public debut this year.

“Monetization should feel native to the experience,” Friar wrote. “If it does not add value, it does not belong.”

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