OpenAI informed investors that revenue was around $50,000 million (EUR 44,700 million) at the end of September, almost 20,000 million less than previously reported, according to the Financial Times (FT).
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09/10/2026
by
Lusa
O newspaper, which consulted financial documents shared with the company's investors, explains that estimates for the updated revenue made by various information agencies were around $70,000 million (eur 6,580 million) at the end of last month.
The annualised revenue expressed as a company would make in 12 months if it maintained the revenue rate used as a reference, and is not necessarily equivalent to actual sales made during a fiscal year.
This metric is one of the main indicators used to evaluate the demand for artificial intelligence (IA) and compare the evolution of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, with that of its most direct competitor, Anthropic.
The discrepancy arises from investors' attempts to directly compare the numbers of both companies, according to a source of the sector cited by the newspaper.
Anthropic includes in its calculation the sales revenue realised by cloud service partners such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not incorporate them.
The adjustments made by investors to express OpenAI's revenue in gross terms led to information that placed the company's annual turnover at around $40,000 million (EUR 35,760 million) in July.
Later, the company reported that this value had grown more than 70% since that month, which resulted in the publication of an estimate of about 70,000 million by the end of September.
OpenAI did not contest that figure at the time, the newspaper states, adding that the company — which is not obliged to disclose its accounts periodically — refused to comment on the information.
OpenAI is negotiating a new round of funding that can assess the company at around 1.4 billion dollars and has committed hundreds of billions in computing and infrastructure capacity, funded by the revenues of its tools and investments of its partners. Supporters include Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon.
In June, the company presented confidentially the documentation for an initial public offer (IPO) and expected its scholarship debut this month. However, it postponed the plans to the growing concern about the risks associated with the most powerful AI systems.