OpenAI's annualized revenue is running at roughly $50 billion, not the $70 billion that made the rounds in investor circles a little over a week ago, according to the Financial Times. The company is said to have corrected the record directly with investors, trimming one of the more widely cited numbers in the AI funding frenzy by about $20 billion.
Where did the higher figure come from in the first place? Per the FT, it wasn't something OpenAI put out. It was assembled by OpenAI's own investors, who were trying to build a number they could stack against Anthropic's reported annualized revenue. That comparison, it turns out, wasn't measuring the same thing on both sides.
OpenAI and Anthropic don't calculate annualized revenue the same way. Anthropic's figure includes sales made through its cloud partners, which padds its run rate. OpenAI doesn't fold in that kind of partner revenue, so a side-by-side comparison built on mismatched methodology was always going to be shaky. The $50 billion figure OpenAI has reportedly now given investors appears to be the company's own, more conservative accounting.
TechCrunch has asked OpenAI for comment and has not yet received a response.
The revised number lands at an awkward moment for a company that has spent much of the year trying to convince the market its revenue can keep pace with its spending. OpenAI's leaked 2025 financials, reported earlier this year, showed the company pulling in about $13 billion while spending considerably more than that to train models and run the infrastructure behind them. That math has not gone unnoticed by people writing the checks.
And the checks have been enormous. OpenAI raised $122 billion in a single funding round back in March, a figure that only makes sense if investors believe the revenue curve is about to bend sharply upward. A $20 billion downward revision to the run-rate figure doesn't kill that story, but it does complicate it, especially with Anthropic's own reported numbers sitting there as the benchmark everyone keeps reaching for.
OpenAI's IPO, once rumored for sometime this year, has already been pushed back to early 2027. Revenue consistency, or the lack of it, tends to matter a great deal once a company is answering to public shareholders rather than venture investors willing to take a longer view. For now, the $50 billion figure is what OpenAI is telling the people funding it. Whether that number holds steady between now and whenever the IPO actually happens is the question investors will be watching most closely.
TBFiled by The Tech Business Desk
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