OpenAI's quarterly sales surge past $10 billion, Bloomberg reports

OpenAI’s revenue for the third quarter crossed $10 billion for the first time, Bloomberg reported on November 11, citing people familiar with the company’s finances who were not named. The figure marks an increase of almost 50% from the roughly $6.7 billion in quarterly sales OpenAI reportedly booked in the second quarter, Bloomberg’s sources said.

That pace is a sharp acceleration. Revenue had grown about 18% between the first and second quarters, when sales rose from roughly $5.7 billion to $6.7 billion, according to the same report. The newest jump suggests demand picked up through the back half of the year as OpenAI shipped updated models and leaned harder into enterprise products and AI agents meant to complete tasks on a user’s behalf.

OpenAI’s losses also appear to be shrinking relative to its sales. Bloomberg’s sources said the company’s adjusted operating margin narrowed from negative 150% in the second quarter to negative 109% in the third, meaning OpenAI is still losing more than it earns on every dollar of revenue, but by a smaller multiple than three months earlier. Bloomberg reported that OpenAI’s current pace now puts it on an annual revenue run rate of $50 billion.

The improvement comes as OpenAI contends with faster growth at Anthropic, its closest rival in large language models. Anthropic reported third-quarter revenue of $17 billion, according to TechCrunch, and said this week that its annualized revenue run rate climbed by $10 billion in a single month, reaching $81 billion as of the end of October. Anthropic is also pursuing a $1.4 trillion valuation ahead of an initial public offering that TechCrunch says is likely to happen soon.

TechCrunch notes that OpenAI and Anthropic calculate their annualized figures differently, which complicates any direct comparison: Anthropic counts sales made through its cloud partners in full, while OpenAI reports only its own share of revenue generated through partners. OpenAI has said it has more than a billion users, though most are likely on free or low-cost plans rather than the enterprise contracts driving Anthropic’s growth.

What this means

The jump past $10 billion in quarterly revenue is the clearest sign yet that large language models can generate real, growing commercial revenue rather than relying on speculative future payoffs. A near-50% quarterly jump and a narrowing operating margin point to a business moving toward sustainability, even if OpenAI is still losing more than a dollar for every dollar it earns.

What remains unclear is how much of that growth is coming from the enterprise contracts where Anthropic has taken the lead, versus OpenAI’s larger but mostly free consumer base. Neither Bloomberg’s report nor OpenAI has broken down the revenue by customer type, and both companies still face competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and lower-cost open-source models, particularly those built in China.

OpenAI has not confirmed the figures itself, and the numbers rest on Bloomberg’s unnamed sources rather than a company filing or statement.