The Financial Times reported on October 8 that OpenAI has told investors its annualized revenue stood at close to $50 billion as of the end of September. That is $20 billion less than the roughly $70 billion reported a week earlier by Axios and other outlets. Reuters then cited a person familiar with the matter in confirming the $50 billion basis. OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment from TechCrunch and Reuters, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the figure.
On the day the report came out, US tech stocks fell. The Nasdaq 100 closed down 1.4%, Nvidia lost 2.9%, Oracle 5.5% and Micron 4.8%. Pinning those declines directly on the report is the media's attribution; there is no corresponding explanation at the exchange level.
The two companies have already fought over how to count once before. In March, when Anthropic reported $30 billion in annualized revenue, OpenAI's side claimed that about $8 billion of it was inflated, as this site reported at the time. This time, the number being marked down is OpenAI's own.
How the $70 billion figure came about
According to the Financial Times, the $70 billion figure came from calculations by OpenAI's own investors. They wanted a direct comparison between OpenAI's annualized revenue and Anthropic's, so they recalculated OpenAI's number using Anthropic's method.
The difference between the two companies' methods lies in the cloud channel. Anthropic counts revenue sold through cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud in its own annualized revenue; OpenAI does not. Earlier Reuters analysis said Anthropic pays its cloud partners a channel share of about 16%. On a like-for-like basis, OpenAI's figure would come out higher than $50 billion, but the company has not disclosed by how much.
"attempts by OpenAI's own investors to produce a direct comparison with Anthropic's annualised revenues"
(The $70 billion figure stemmed from OpenAI's own investors trying to compare directly with Anthropic's annualized revenue.)
The two companies' numbers side by side
Here are several publicly reported figures set against each other:
| Metric | OpenAI | Anthropic |
|---|---|---|
| Annualized revenue, 2024 | $6 billion | Not disclosed |
| Annualized revenue, early 2026 | $20 billion | Not disclosed |
| Revenue, Q2 2026 | $6.7 billion | $11.5 billion |
| Latest annualized revenue | Close to $50 billion (end of September) | Over $65 billion (July) |
| Year-end expectation | Not disclosed | $100 billion (company expectation) |
The second quarter was the first time Anthropic's quarterly revenue topped OpenAI's. On the latest basis, OpenAI's annualized revenue is also below the figure Anthropic announced in July. One caveat: both sides' "annualized" numbers are run rates produced by multiplying a single month or quarter, and analysts often warn that this kind of metric amplifies short-term swings.
The mechanism of that amplification is straightforward: annualized revenue is usually the most recent month's revenue multiplied by 12. For a model company, API calls are billed by usage, and large customers' one-off prepayments or end-of-quarter discount promotions can make a single month's number bounce up and down; multiply by 12 and the bounce is magnified twelvefold. It is not unusual for the same company to report annualized figures two months in a row that differ by 20%.
Public information on the cost side is thinner. Previously leaked financial data showed OpenAI's 2025 revenue at about $13 billion, with spending clearly above revenue; this site has previously reported on Anthropic's quarterly profit, which likewise rests on leaked documents. On compute commitments, a leaked prospectus this site covered lists $518 billion in contractual obligations for Anthropic, while OpenAI has no public figure on the same basis. Neither company has published gross margins.
The accounting question ahead of listings
OpenAI completed a $122 billion funding round in March, and its IPO has been pushed back to early 2027. Anthropic is also preparing to go public; the New Constructs valuation estimate this site reported earlier was built on a leaked prospectus.
With both companies heading for the public markets, how annualized revenue is calculated and who gets credit for cloud-channel revenue will ultimately be written into the filing documents. A prospectus has to list recognized revenue quarter by quarter on an audited basis, and the annualized run rates common in investor materials will then recede into the background. Until the formal filings are public, neither company has offered a unified method for deciding whether $50 billion and $65 billion can be compared directly; the gap between the $70 billion held by investors and the $50 billion OpenAI itself reports is precisely this layer of definition.
Sources: Financial Times report, TechCrunch, CocoLoop, Reuters, ITHome. Reuters coverage was used to verify the two companies' differing annualized-revenue methods and the second-quarter revenue figures; ITHome was used to verify that day's US stock declines.