OpenAI tells investors its annualized revenue is near $50 billion, not $70 billion

OpenAI has told investors that its annualized revenue, a measure of yearly income based on current sales pace, is “approaching $50 billion,” according to the Financial Times. That figure is roughly $20 billion lower than the nearly $70 billion annualized revenue reported for the company a little over a week earlier, a number that briefly put OpenAI’s reported sales pace close to Anthropic’s.

The $70 billion figure came from OpenAI’s own investors, who had tried to produce a number that could be compared directly with Anthropic’s reported annualized revenue, the Financial Times reports. OpenAI has since told investors that estimate was too high, and that the real figure is closer to $50 billion, according to the outlet. TechCrunch, which first reported the correction, said it had reached out to OpenAI for comment.

Part of the gap comes from how the two companies count revenue. OpenAI and Anthropic calculate annualized revenue differently: Anthropic’s figure includes sales made through its cloud partners, while OpenAI’s does not. That difference means a direct comparison between the two companies’ numbers is less simple than investors’ earlier estimate suggested. That accounting gap does not fully explain a $20 billion swing, and the Financial Times did not detail what else drove the lower figure.

The size of OpenAI’s actual revenue matters because the company is trying to justify enormous sums of outside investment. OpenAI raised $122 billion in a single funding round in March, according to TechCrunch. Earlier this year, the company’s leaked 2025 financial figures showed it brought in about $13 billion in revenue while spending significantly more than that. OpenAI’s planned initial public offering, once rumored to happen this year, has been pushed back to early 2027.

Neither the $70 billion nor the $50 billion figure has been confirmed by OpenAI through its own public financial statements; both numbers are described as information shared with or by investors. The company has not released audited annual revenue figures, so it remains unclear which number, if either, will hold up as more complete financial data becomes available. That timeline gives OpenAI more than a year to clarify its revenue figures before public investors see audited numbers. What to watch next is whether OpenAI or its investors publish a clearer accounting of annualized revenue before the company’s planned 2027 listing, and whether other AI labs face similar questions about how their own revenue figures are calculated.