OpenAI Revenue May Be Off By $20 Billion

OpenAI’s annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, according to investor documents reviewed by the FT. That’s roughly $20 billion below the widely reported figure. The discrepancy stems from different ways of accounting for cloud-partner sales.

Investors had adjusted OpenAI’s July revenue run rate to about $40 billion to make it comparable with Anthropic’s. Applying OpenAI’s subsequently reported growth of more than 70% to that adjusted baseline produced the $70 billion estimate. The latest investor presentation puts July’s actual run rate closer to $30 billion. OpenAI declined to comment.

The revised figures still show rapid growth. They also expose how much depends on the definition of a number. Annualized revenue extrapolates a recent sales pace across a year. Hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure commitments and public-market expectations rest, in part, on these estimates. Comparisons require consistent accounting and a clearly defined baseline. So, if we are comparing OpenAI and Anthropic, we have some additional accounting to do.