OpenAI's revenue is about $50 billion a year, not $70 billion. Here's where the gap came from
The FT reports OpenAI told investors its annual revenue is nearing $50 billion, not the $70 billion that circulated. Why the numbers differ.
Carried by established outlets, not officially confirmed.
For more than a week, the number going around was that OpenAI was making money at a rate of around $70 billion a year. On 8 October, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI's own figure, given to its investors, is closer to $50 billion. AI stocks fell the same day.
OpenAI hasn't commented publicly in the coverage we've seen, and the figures come from documents shared with investors, so this post carries a Reported stamp.
What's reported
What "annualized revenue" means
It's not what a company made last year. It's a recent month's revenue, multiplied by twelve. It's a useful way to show how fast a company is growing, and an easy number to stretch, because nobody has to say which month, or what counts.
That second part is the whole story here. If you count the money a cloud partner collects when it resells your model, your number goes up. If you only count what reaches you, it doesn't. Neither is wrong, but you can't compare one company's figure with another's unless they count the same way, and that's exactly the comparison investors were making.
Why it matters
It isn't a collapse. By its own account to investors, OpenAI is still growing fast. On the FT's reporting, most of the gap comes down to what gets counted, not to sales that went missing.
It matters for the comparison everyone's making. Anthropic is reportedly preparing to go public as soon as November, and the two companies' revenue is constantly set side by side. Until both count the same way, those comparisons need an asterisk.
And it matters for the money already committed. OpenAI has signed very large long-term deals for computing power, which we looked at in OpenAI's $1.5 trillion paradox. Whether its revenue is $50 billion or $70 billion changes how those commitments look, which is why chip and cloud stocks moved on the news.
What to watch
A public filing. If OpenAI goes public, it will have to publish audited revenue under standard accounting rules, and the argument about which number is right ends there. Until then, treat every annualized figure, for any AI company, as the company's own framing.