OpenAI reportedly tells investors annualized revenue is near $50B, $20B below earlier figure

OpenAI revises the revenue picture for investors

OpenAI has told investors that its annualized revenue is approaching $50 billion, according to the Financial Times. TechCrunch, reporting on the FT story, puts that roughly $20 billion below the number that was in circulation a little over a week ago, when the company's run rate was said to be closing in on $70 billion — a level that would have made it competitive with Anthropic's reported pace.

The earlier figure was never a formal public disclosure. According to the FT, the $70 billion estimate grew out of attempts by OpenAI's own investors to build a direct comparison with Anthropic's annualized revenue, using information OpenAI had shared with them. News outlets then picked it up.

How a $20 billion gap opens in a week

The revision illustrates how little hard data exists about the top AI labs' finances. These figures reach the public mainly through investor briefings, leaks and secondhand reporting rather than formal disclosure. A gap of this size between two signals spaced about a week apart says as much about how noisy those signals are as it does about the underlying business.

There is also a measurement problem baked into the comparison. As TechCrunch notes, OpenAI and Anthropic calculate annualized revenue differently: Anthropic counts sales made by its cloud partners, and OpenAI does not. Even if the two companies' headline numbers were identical, they would not be measuring the same thing, which makes run-rate comparisons across AI labs a rough guide at best.

The capital sitting behind the number

The revenue question matters because of what has been raised against it. TechCrunch reports that OpenAI pulled in $122 billion in a March funding round alone. The company's leaked 2025 financials, which surfaced earlier this year, showed roughly $13 billion in revenue against spending that was significantly higher.

The timeline around a public listing has shifted as well. An OpenAI IPO that had been rumored for this year has been pushed to early 2027, according to TechCrunch. The outlet says it reached out to OpenAI for comment on the revenue report.

The story has also been circulating on developer community feeds, where commentary has focused less on the specific figure and more on the general volatility of AI revenue expectations.

Why it matters

OpenAI is the reference point for how the generative AI market is valued, and its revenue trajectory is the number investors use to justify the sector's enormous capital expenditure. A $20 billion downgrade in the signaled run rate, arriving weeks after the higher figure spread, will feed directly into questions about whether the current buildout can pay for itself.

It also changes the competitive frame with Anthropic. If OpenAI's actual annualized revenue is near $50 billion rather than $70 billion, the two labs are considerably closer than recent comparisons suggested — although the differing treatment of cloud-partner sales means any such comparison needs an asterisk.

Finally, for anyone building on top of these platforms, the episode is a caution against treating leaked investor figures as settled fact. The most-watched number in AI moved by tens of billions of dollars based on what was communicated to investors, not on anything the company filed or published.