OpenAI Annualized Revenue Exceeds $25 Billion

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly.SCALING BACK:OpenAI is scaling back plans to enable direct checkout within ChatGPT, opting instead to complete transactions through integrated third-party apps, The Information's Ann Gehan and Sri Muppidi. Due to users' habit of "browsing without buying" and technical barriers such as inventory synchronization and fraud prevention, only about a dozen of the millions of Shopifymerchants have actually integrated, according to the report.AI CHIP SHIPMENTS:White House officials have drafted regulations that would restrict AI chip shipments to anywhere in the world without American approval, Mackenzie Hawkins of Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The proposed regulations would require companies to seek U.S. permission for virtually all exports of AI accelerators from companies like Nvidiaand AMD, an expansion of curbs that currently cover around 40 countries, sources tell Bloomberg.ANNUALIZED REVENUE:AI startup OpenAI topped $25B in annualized revenue as of the end of last month, The Information's Sri Muppidi, citing a person familiar with the matter. This is a 17% increase from the $21.4B in annualized revenue that the company generated at the end of the year, the author adds.EXTREME REASONING:OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT-5.4, with an "extreme" reasoning mode and a 1M-token context window, matching past models but up from GPT-5.2's 400K, The Information's Stephanie Palazzolo.SUPPLY CHAIN RISK:An industry group of big tech companies has expressed concern to U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth about his declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk, saying it creates uncertainty for companies that could threaten the military's access to the best products and services, Karen Freifeld of Reuters. "We are concerned by recent reports regarding the Department of War's consideration of imposing a supply chain risk designation in response to a procurement dispute," the Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Nvidia, Amazon, and Apple, said in a letter dated Wednesday. The letter states that the declaration threatens "to undermine the government's access to the best-in-class products and services from American companies that serve all agencies and components of the federal government."HUMANOID ROBOTS:Texas Instrumentsannounced it is accelerating the safe deployment of humanoid robots into the real world with Nvidia. By combining TI's real-time motor control, sensing, radar and power technologies with Nvidia's advanced robotics compute, ethernet based sensing and simulation technologies, robotics developers can validate perception, actuation and safety earlier and more accurately. TI connects Nvidia physical AI compute to real-world applications with deterministic control, sensing, power and safety at every joint and subsystem. This partnership will help developers move faster from virtual development to production-ready, scalable and safety-compliant systems. As part of this collaboration, TI designed a sensor fusion solution by integrating its mmWave radar technology with Nvidia Jetson Thor using Nvidia Holoscan Sensor Bridge to enable low-latency, 3D perception and safety awareness for humanoid robots. TI will showcase the solution at Nvidia GTC, March 16-19, in San Jose, California.JOB CUTS:Amazoncut jobs inside its robotics division this week, the latest reductions in a sweeping cost-cutting campaign, Business Insider's Eugene Kim. In a message to employees on Tuesday, seen by Business Insider, Amazon Robotics VP Scott Dresser described the changes as "difficult but necessary." He stressed that robotics remains a "strategic priority" even as the company restructures and pares back certain efforts. It's unclear how many employees were affected by Tuesday's cuts, the author adds.