OpenAI Told Investors Its Annualized Revenue Is Near $50 Billion, Not $70 Billion. Oracle Shares Fall More Than 5%

Since a roughly $70 billion annualized revenue figure for OpenAI began circulating in late September, the number has been walked back hard. The company told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, according to financial documents shared with them and reviewed by the Financial Times. OpenAI declined to comment to the FT.

The market reacted fast. Oracle shares dropped more than 5% today, Oct. 8, with Nvidia, AMD and Microsoft also lower. The Nasdaq was down about 1.4% in afternoon trading. Barron's tied part of the decline to the OpenAI report. Rising oil prices and Treasury yields were also weighing on stocks.

Oracle's move is a reversal. The stock rose 5.3% after the $70 billion figure first surfaced.

How a $50 billion business became a $70 billion headline

The FT's source says the gap came from the way OpenAI and Anthropic count revenue. Anthropic includes sales made through cloud partners such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. OpenAI leaves those out.

Investors wanted a direct comparison between the two rivals. They "grossed up" OpenAI's number to match Anthropic's method, according to a person familiar with the matter cited by the FT. That adjustment produced the reports of $40 billion in annualized revenue in August.

Then OpenAI told investors its revenue had grown more than 70% since the start of the third quarter in July. Applied to the inflated $40 billion base, that growth rate yielded the roughly $70 billion figure. Applied to OpenAI's own base, it lands near $50 billion.

So OpenAI did not lose $20 billion in sales. The $20 billion was never in OpenAI's own numbers. Annualized revenue is also often calculated by multiplying a single month's revenue by 12, and is not money actually booked over a year.

What the correction leaves standing

The lower number is still steep growth. CFO Sarah Friar wrote in a January blog post that OpenAI's annualized recurring revenue topped $20 billion at the end of 2025. Roughly $50 billion nine months later is about two and a half times that.

That is the argument for calm, and Invezz's market commentary makes it. It calls the miss mostly a definitional problem rather than a demand collapse and says Microsoft's Azure and Nvidia should keep benefiting from broad AI infrastructure spending whether OpenAI's run rate is $50 billion or $70 billion. That analysis names a risk: OpenAI's own demand genuinely slowing.

Others read the episode as a crack in the demand story. ZeroHedge argued the report puts the "excess demand" narrative behind the AI capex boom in doubt. Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowicz pointed to Oracle's 5% drop as evidence of how leveraged the tech sector is to OpenAI and Anthropic. Newsquawk's market note said the question for the listed chain is whether the shortfall reflects a timing gap or weak end demand. It also called the report unconfirmed and the number directional.

The valuation math

The timing is awkward for OpenAI. Bloomberg previously reported that the company plans to raise at least $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation. At $50 billion in annualized revenue, that is about 28 times revenue. At $70 billion it would have been 20 times. The two figures are not directly comparable, since they rest on different revenue counts.

The company raised $122 billion in a single round in March. Leaked 2025 financials showed it took in about $13 billion that year while spending significantly more. Sam Altman has ruled out a 2026 IPO, leaving 2027 as a possible listing date.

Prediction markets have noticed. On Polymarket, traders put roughly 58% odds on OpenAI going public by the end of 2027 and closing its first day above a $1.5 trillion market cap. That is down from around 80% in September. The odds of no IPO by the end of 2027 have risen to about 23%.

The spending commitments behind the buildout are large. The Wall Street Journal reported today that Broadcom is working to arrange more than $50 billion in financing for custom chips developed with OpenAI.

Open questions

OpenAI is private. It publishes no quarterly report, and the public record is a patchwork of blog posts and leaks measured at different dates. The company has not said what its own figure would look like on Anthropic's accounting basis, or whether it will publicly correct the earlier number.

The next test is the $30 billion-plus raise. Whether investors will pay 28 times a $50 billion run rate at a $1.4 trillion valuation is not yet answered.