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research worthy skeptical analysis but no tradeable asset
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In the fall of 2025, OpenAI projected revenue of $145 billion in 2029. The company’s sales in 2024 were $3.7 billion. That reflects a 5-year compound annual growth rate of 108 percent.
To assess the plausibility of this forecast, we can start with an initial belief based on what companies with $2-5 billion of starting sales have actually done based on a nearly 18,900 firm-period observations for U.S. public companies from 1950 to 2024. Companies can appear in the sample more than once.
The data reveal that no public company has grown this fast for five years in the last three-quarters of a century. The results include all industries. The average compound annual growth rate is 7.0 percent, and the standard deviation is 10.6 percent. The forecast implies a roughly 9.5 standard deviation outcome for OpenAI under a normal approximation, which is extraordinarily unlikely.
Apple's lifetime highest 5-year revenue CAGR starting in 1997 is 44%.
ByteDance did have a 5 year revenue CAGE of 101% starting in 2017: $2.4B to $80B.
What growth rate would justify this $30B investment today?