OpenAI’s Path to Owning One Quarter of a $700B AI Market

OpenAI is positioning itself to capture a dominant slice of an AI industry projected to reach $700 billion by 2030, according to analysts at JPMorgan. The bank estimates that if OpenAI’s revenues hit $174 billion by the decade’s end, the company would hold roughly 25 percent of that total market value

The logic behind that forecast hinges on OpenAI’s current advantages. Its user base is massive: ChatGPT reportedly has 800 million weekly active users, which alone accounts for more than 10 percent of the global adult population. This level of adoption gives OpenAI leverage in multiple directions: negotiating chip deals, attracting infrastructure partners, integrating into enterprise workflows, and shaping user expectations for what AI can do OpenAI’s recent push into consumer AI apps underscores this ambition. Its video app “Sora” hit 1 million downloads in five days—a signal of how fast OpenAI can mobilize users and brand momentum. But core to the forecast is not just growth in users, it’s growth in monetization. OpenAI must convert usage into revenue via subscriptions, enterprise deals, agent services, hardware, compute, and AI-powered commerce.

Still, the path is far from certain. A few risks are visible

Scale vs. sustainability: To reach $174 billion in revenue, OpenAI would need to expand monetization massively, while containing costs in compute, talent, regulation, and infrastructure Competitive pressure: Lower-cost or localized modelsparticularly from AI ambition centers like China (for example, DeepSeek) could chip away at OpenAI’s dominance if they undercut on price or local adaptation. Regulation & oversight: As OpenAI grows in influence, governments will scrutinize its ecosystem approach where it builds or partners across hardware, software, data, and markets Overvaluation risk Part of OpenAI’s valuation is premised on future potential rather than current profitability. If execution lags, investor patience may strain

From a journalist’s view: OpenAI is no longer a rising star it’s racing to become a foundational pillar of the next tech economy. Its move toward capturing 25 percent of a multihundred-billion market is audacious. If it succeeds, it will reshape how AI is bought, sold, regulated, and embedded into society. If it falters, it could be a cautionary tale of hype meeting structural friction