OpenAI's annualized revenue is $20 billion lower than previously reported in the press. The Financial Times published the figure on October 8, citing financial documents the company shared with investors. Reuters carried the FT report, and TechCrunch independently confirmed the story.
The Gap Between the Numbers
In the final days of September, several outlets, including Reuters, reported that OpenAI's annualized revenue had reached $70 billion. The number was taken as further proof of the growth pace in artificial intelligence and drew wide discussion.
The Financial Times now paints a different picture: according to its October 8 report, toward the end of September OpenAI told investors that its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion. So the gap between the $70 billion figure in the press and the company's own number is $20 billion — nearly 29% of the earlier estimate. The difference shows the late-September estimate was significantly higher than the company's own assessment.
"Toward the end of September, the company informed investors that its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion," — the Financial Times, via Reuters.
Annualized revenue is not a figure from a company's actual annual report. It is an estimate showing how much money could be collected by year-end if the current period's revenue pace stayed unchanged all year. Fast-growing technology companies often use this metric to describe their current state, though the method of calculating it can vary from company to company.
TechCrunch also independently confirmed the story on October 8, writing that OpenAI's revenue was $20 billion below earlier estimates. Thus two outlets reached the same conclusion on the same day.
Why the Comparison Got Confusing
As Reuters writes, the discrepancy arose after OpenAI's own investors tried to compare the company's metrics directly with Anthropic's annualized revenue. The problem is that the two companies calculate the same term differently, and at large numbers the difference is conspicuous.
Anthropic includes revenue flowing through its cloud partners — AWS and Google Cloud — in its annualized revenue. OpenAI does not count such revenue. So placing the two companies' published figures side by side and drawing direct conclusions is wrong: what is being compared is not actually the same thing.
In other words, two different calculation methods sit behind a metric with the same name. In public discussion this difference went unnoticed, and the $70 billion estimate may have emerged precisely on the soil of this confusion.
Because there is no single calculation standard in the artificial intelligence industry, investors and observers are forced to study each company's methodology separately. It is this methodological difference that likely created the ground for the $70 billion estimate to appear in the press — different sources relied on different calculation methods.
Investors wanted in this way to compare the growth rates of the two leading labs side by side. But due to the differences in calculation methods, such a comparison produced a misleading result, and it was this very process that exposed the gap between the figures.
Transparency in the Shadow of IPO
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Reuters, in turn, openly stated that it could not independently verify the FT report. Nevertheless, on October 8 two outlets — Reuters and TechCrunch — independently of each other reached the same conclusion: OpenAI's revenue is $20 billion below earlier estimates.
The financial documents underlying the FT report were shared with investors, meaning they are not a public source. Reuters therefore specifically noted that it published the story citing FT and could not verify it independently.
As Reuters writes, both OpenAI and Anthropic may be preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in the near future. If the companies go public, their financial reports will be disclosed and Wall Street analysts will see the real numbers firsthand.
For now, the only open sources on this matter are Reuters, which covered the FT report, and TechCrunch, which independently confirmed it. Both companies remain private for now, and their full financial reports are not disclosed. This has once again brought questions about the financial transparency of AI giants to the agenda — especially as the market values them based on exactly these figures.
