OpenAI’s annualized revenue rate was about $50 billion at the end of September, according to the Financial Times, not the nearly $70 billion initially circulated in comparisons with Anthropic. The difference reflects accounting for sales made through cloud partners rather than a reported collapse in customer demand.
Anthropic records the full customer payment from some partner sales as revenue and then books the cloud provider’s share as an expense. OpenAI records only its own share for certain transactions. Both approaches can comply with US accounting rules, but placing the resulting figures side by side without adjustment produces a misleading comparison.
OpenAI reportedly still expects its annualized rate to reach at least $70 billion by the end of 2026. The company told investors that overall annualized revenue rose 77 percent in the third quarter, while enterprise revenue increased 107 percent, according to reports cited by The Decoder.
Those figures are part of talks for at least $30 billion in new funding at a target pre-money valuation of $1.4 trillion. OpenAI raised up to $122 billion in March at an $852 billion post-money valuation. Fast growth does not settle the company’s economics: model training and data-center commitments remain enormous. The corrected number matters because investors are judging whether revenue can rise quickly enough to support that infrastructure spending.