# Runway The number of months a company can continue operating at its current Burn Rate before running out of cash. Calculated by dividing cash reserves by monthly burn. A company with $10B in cash and a $500M monthly burn has 20 months of runway. Runway is the existential metric for pre-profit AI companies. [[OpenAI]]'s enormous funding rounds ($122B Series G) exist because frontier model development burns cash at a pace that would exhaust most corporate treasuries in months. The $852B valuation documented in [[OpenAI Investors]] is partly a bet that the company can reach profitability before the runway ends — and partly a recognition that investors will keep extending the runway as long as the growth story holds. When runway shortens, companies make different decisions. The defense-tech pivot — [[OpenAI]] accepting Pentagon contracts, softening safety stances — can be read partly as runway management: government contracts provide stable, recurring revenue that extends the runway and diversifies away from the consumer subscription model. ## See Also - [[ARR]] — the revenue that extends it - [[OpenAI Investors]] — funding that replenishes it