OpenAI's annualized revenue is trending significantly lower than earlier projections, raising fresh questions about the growth rate of AI service demand. According to financial documents shared with investors, the company reported that its annual revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September.
The $20 Billion Discrepancy
This figure stands roughly $20 billion below the $70 billion estimate reported late last month by the Financial Times and other outlets. This gap does not necessarily represent a decline in actual performance but is largely attributed to different accounting methodologies used to capture annualized figures.
The issue surfaced as investors attempted to benchmark OpenAI against its primary competitor, Anthropic. The comparison is complex due to diverging calculation methods:
- Anthropic includes revenue generated through cloud partners like AWS and Google Cloud.
- OpenAI excludes such partner-derived revenue from its primary calculation.
Market Implications
Investor attempts to "gross up" OpenAI's figures to match Anthropic's reporting style contributed to the earlier, inflated $70 billion estimate. The revelation of the $50 billion figure hit the tech sector at a sensitive time; following the report, the Nasdaq index saw its losses widen to approximately 1.5%.
While OpenAI has declined to comment, the revision highlights a critical concern for the industry: whether the massive capital expenditure fueling the AI boom is generating a proportional return in realized revenue.
