OpenAI's September annualized revenue nears $50 billion, less than previously indicated, source says

By Jaspreet Singh and ‌Krystal Hu

Oct 8 (Reuters) - ​OpenAI ​has told investors its annualized revenue for September was almost $50 billion, a drop from what it signaled earlier, a ‌person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

The ⁠company previously indicated to investors at a separate event that its revenue run rate ‌for last month was approaching $70 ‌billion, Reuters and other media reported.

The discrepancy mainly arose from an attempt to produce a direct comparison with figures from rival Anthropic, ​the person said on condition of anonymity.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

The latest revenue figure was first reported by ⁠the Financial Times.

OpenAI, unlike Anthropic, does not include, for instance, revenue from sales via cloud ​partners such as Amazon's AWS and Alphabet's Google Cloud.

Anthropic pays cloud partners about 16% of every dollar earned ​through them, which last year accounted for ‌half of revenue, a Reuters analysis showed.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing to go public, a process through ⁠which Wall Street is likely to gain a clearer view of finances, including the sustainability of rapid revenue growth brought about by a boom in ⁠demand for AI applications.

OpenAI started this year with $20 billion in annualized revenue versus $6 ​billion in 2024. Its quarterly revenue was eclipsed by Anthropic for the first time in the second quarter, with OpenAI reporting $6.7 billion compared to Anthropic's $11.5 billion.

Anthropic's annualized ‌revenue crossed $65 billion in July, and is set to reach $100 billion by year-end, sources previously told Reuters.

Analysts consider ‌annualized revenue run rate a sometimes misleading sales metric, which often involves ⁠multiplying one month's revenue by ‌12. It has nonetheless ​become a popular metric among fast-growing Silicon Valley startups.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and ‌Christopher Cushing)

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