OpenAI’s $70 Billion Revenue Story Shrinks to $50 Billion
OpenAI’s $70 Billion Revenue Story Shrinks to $50 Billion
OpenAI’s revenue narrative has taken a $20 billion turn — and the market is parsing whether it reflects a slowdown or simply a different way of counting.
In September, a $70 billion annualized-revenue figure circulated after being shared with investors. That number was designed to make OpenAI more directly comparable with Anthropic, whose reported run rate includes sales made through cloud partners.
The distinction matters. Under the approach described by accounting professor Francine McKenna, Anthropic can record the full value of a sale made through a cloud provider, then list the provider’s share as an expense. OpenAI, by contrast, records only its portion of certain partner sales — a judgment tied to control of the customer relationship and delivery of the product.
By the end of last month, however, OpenAI told investors that annualized revenue was “approaching $50 billion,” up from roughly $28 billion at the end of June. The earlier $70 billion estimate, reporting suggests, was effectively a grossed-up comparison using Anthropic’s methodology rather than OpenAI’s usual presentation.
That explanation has not fully calmed investors. The disclosure that the key metric had merely doubled over the quarter hit technology stocks exposed to the AI trade, underscoring how heavily the sector’s valuations depend on relentlessly rising revenue projections.
For OpenAI, the scrutiny lands amid exceptional spending and fundraising. The company raised $122 billion in a March funding round, while leaked 2025 financials indicated about $13 billion in revenue alongside far larger costs, according to TechCrunch. Its previously rumored IPO has reportedly slipped to early 2027.
The immediate disagreement is technical; the larger one is not. Start-up investors may accept annualized run rates and adjusted comparisons. Public-market investors will want the less flattering, harder-to-engineer answer: actual revenue and eventually auditable profit.
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