OpenAI's annualised revenue is roughly $20 billion lower than investors had been led to believe, the Financial Times reported Thursday, raising fresh questions about how solid the artificial-intelligence boom really is. Citing documents shared with OpenAI's financial backers, the FT said the ChatGPT maker put its annualised revenue at close to $50 billion as of the end of September.
Where the $70 Billion Figure Came From
Media reports late last month had pegged OpenAI's annualised revenue at around $70 billion, based on information given to investors. In an apparent pushback on the FT's latest report, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC that the earlier number — which the network had reported as $68 billion — counted gross revenue from OpenAI's partnerships with companies like chipmaker Nvidia, and was intended to make it easier to compare OpenAI with its chief rival Anthropic.
According to the FT, the discrepancy grew out of attempts by OpenAI's own investors to produce a figure directly comparable with Anthropic's annualised revenue. The two companies count the metric differently: Anthropic includes revenue from sales made through cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not. Investors track the number at both companies as the clearest signal of demand for artificial intelligence, and it has helped justify enormous data-centre spending and the AI-fuelled stock market rally.
AI Stocks Take the Hit
The report weighed on AI-linked stocks. Nvidia fell 2.9%, Oracle lost nearly 6%, SpaceX dropped 4%, and Intel slid 5.3%. The Nasdaq Composite sank 1.25% — its worst day since mid-August — while the S&P 500's information-technology sector dropped 1.8%, the weakest of the benchmark's 11 industries. Broader semiconductor, cloud and AI-infrastructure names all sold off as the outlook for AI demand was called into question.
Analysts say the market's reaction reflects how tightly the entire AI supply chain is now chained to OpenAI's fortunes. With valuations built on the assumption that demand for AI keeps compounding, even a change in how revenue is counted ripples through chipmakers, cloud providers and data-centre builders.
Awkward Timing for a $1.4 Trillion Fundraise
The report lands as OpenAI negotiates a fresh private fundraising that could value the company at roughly $1.4 trillion, according to the FT. OpenAI confidentially submitted paperwork for an initial public offering in June and had been widely expected to go public this fall, but the listing has since been pushed back — with some reports pointing to early 2027. Archrival Anthropic is expected to list on public markets next month.
The scrutiny is mounting on OpenAI's finances: the company raised $122 billion in a March funding round alone, and leaked 2025 financials earlier this year showed it had made about $13 billion while spending far more. OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Investors have long grumbled that annualised revenue is an imprecise metric — it typically extrapolates a single month's sales across a full year — yet it remains the standard yardstick for fast-growing AI startups. The FT called the $20 billion gap "a massive gap likely to damp optimism about the growth of AI demand." Whether the correction is an accounting technicality or a genuine demand signal will shape how Wall Street prices the AI trade in the months ahead.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Electrodoodle (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0