OpenAI’s investor revenue estimate sits near $50 billion

• The Financial Times reported that OpenAI told investors its annualised revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September.
• A $70 billion estimate reported on 29 September was based on efforts by investors to compare OpenAI’s revenue with Anthropic’s.
• The reports do not provide a like-for-like calculation showing how much of the gap comes from accounting adjustments or actual sales growth.
• Annualised revenue is a recent sales pace projected across a year, not revenue booked over a full year or a measure of profit.

OpenAI’s annualised revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, according to investor materials reviewed by the Financial Times. That is well below the nearly $70 billion figure reported late last month, but the two numbers were not presented on a clearly comparable basis. ^{1 2}

The higher estimate was reported by Axios on 29 September, citing people familiar with OpenAI’s financials. It said the company’s annualised run rate had risen more than 70 per cent since the start of the third quarter. The report did not publish the underlying financial documents. ³

The Financial Times said investors had tried to adjust OpenAI’s figures to make them directly comparable with Anthropic’s. That distinction matters because the companies treat some sales through cloud partners differently: Anthropic records the full value of certain sales and counts partner payments as expenses, while OpenAI records only its share of some such sales. ^{1 4}

That accounting difference can change how large reported revenue looks. But Axios cautioned in a separate explainer that it did not account for the whole gap between the companies’ previously reported figures. The public reporting does not supply a calculation that reconciles the late-September estimates or separates accounting adjustments from changes in sales. ⁴

Nor does the $70 billion figure establish that OpenAI formally forecast or targeted that amount. The reports describe it as an investor-derived comparison that was then widely reported. And because annualised revenue projects a recent pace across a year, neither estimate says how much OpenAI actually booked over a full year. ^{1 3}

The distinction matters as investors weigh the growth behind the AI industry’s enormous infrastructure spending. But these estimates alone do not show OpenAI’s profit, cash flow or how the difference affects its ability to fund that spending.

Footnotes

1. Financial Times, “OpenAI annualised revenues $20bn less than previously signalled”. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. TechCrunch, “OpenAI’s revenue is reportedly $20 billion less than previously projected”. ↩

3. Axios, “Scoop: OpenAI’s annual recurring revenue nears $70B”. ↩ ↩²

4. Axios, “Anthropic and OpenAI’s revenue chasm, explained”. ↩ ↩²