OpenAI's Revenue Run Rate Nears $70 Billion, But the Company Still Won't Say What It's Spending

Since Anthropic's leaked IPO prospectus showed a $42 billion net loss and $518 billion in future infrastructure commitments, OpenAI has put out its own headline number: an annualized revenue run rate approaching $70 billion.

The figure comes from people familiar with OpenAI's financials cited by Axios, and has since been repeated by Reuters, which reported that the run rate has risen more than 70% since the start of the third quarter in July. Enterprise sales, the business-to-business side of OpenAI's operation, more than doubled over that same stretch. On the consumer side, OpenAI added more revenue in the third quarter alone than it added in all of 2025 combined, according to the same sourcing.

The metric itself has a catch

Annualized run rate is calculated, in its simplest form, by taking one month's revenue and multiplying it by 12. Reuters flagged this directly, calling it "sometimes a misleading sales metric" that has nonetheless become the go-to number for fast-growing Silicon Valley startups trying to signal momentum to investors ahead of a listing.

It's not audited. Nobody named at OpenAI has put their name on these figures publicly, and the company itself has not confirmed them on the record.

Closing the gap with Anthropic, without closing the transparency gap

Anthropic's run rate hit roughly $65 billion in July, putting it ahead of OpenAI at the time. OpenAI's new numbers put it back in the lead, or at least back in the conversation, right as both companies angle for public listings that would force them to actually show their math.

Here's the asymmetry. Anthropic's prospectus, reviewed by Reuters, disclosed a 2025 net loss of $42 billion, revenue that grew twelvefold to nearly $4.6 billion, an operating loss exceeding $8 billion excluding certain liability write-downs, and $518 billion in committed future cloud and infrastructure spending. Whatever the number, Anthropic put it on paper.

OpenAI has done none of that. Axios noted plainly that OpenAI's specific expenses "have not yet been disclosed." Investors get the growth story without the cost story. Every company preparing for an IPO controls its own narrative, but it means the $70 billion figure tells you half of what you need to know.

Why Oracle's stock moved

Oracle shares rose 5.3% Tuesday, according to Reuters, because Oracle is OpenAI's critical computing infrastructure partner. Gil Luria, managing director at D.A. Davidson, told Reuters that OpenAI represents around half of Oracle's compute backlog, and that OpenAI's accelerating growth "reinforces OpenAI's ability to live up to its expectations for compute capacity."

Faster OpenAI revenue growth means OpenAI is more likely to actually pay for the enormous compute deals it has already signed, which is good news for the companies supplying that compute. Oracle's stock moved on the news rather than OpenAI's, since OpenAI isn't publicly traded yet.

The skeptic's case is just as straightforward. None of this is audited. OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO in June and, per Reuters, is expected to list by early 2027. CEO Sam Altman said earlier this month the company would not go public in 2026, citing safety concerns around increasingly capable AI systems, according to reporting cited by Axios. In the meantime, Bloomberg has reported OpenAI is in early talks for another private funding round that could value it above $1.2 trillion, on top of the IPO track.

A company can be growing fast and burning cash fast at the same time. Anthropic's own IPO filing admits as much, warning investors in a roughly 80-page risk section, nearly twice the length of its business description, that its AI models could pose an "existential risk" and exhibit "self-preserving behaviors" including attempts to resist shutdown.

OpenAI hasn't published a comparable risk section because it hasn't published a prospectus yet. When it does, likely ahead of that 2027 listing, the $70 billion run rate will finally get measured against an actual cost sheet. Until then, it's a number from unnamed sources, repeated by outlets that all trace back to the same Axios report, dressed up as market-moving fact.