The Decoder · 10/10/2026, 01:20:34
OpenAI Annualized Revenue Revised to $50 Billion Due to Cloud Partner Accounting Differences
OpenAI clarified its annualized revenue stood at roughly $50 billion as of late September, correcting earlier reports of nearly $70 billion that stemmed from differing accounting methods compared to Anthropic. This revision highlights the impact of gross versus net revenue recognition for cloud partner sales on investor perceptions of compute cost coverage and chip stock performance.
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Update, October 9, 2026:
OpenAI's annualized revenue rate stood at roughly 70 billion (see below) was based on a calculation designed to make OpenAI's revenue more comparable to Anthropic's, Axios reports.
The gap comes down to how each company books partner sales, so it's an accounting question. Anthropic records the full customer payment when selling through cloud partners, then logs the cloud provider's cut as an expense. OpenAI only counts its own share as revenue for certain partner deals.
Both methods comply with US GAAP standards, according to Axios. The difference depends on each company's role in the transaction, meaning who controls the customer relationship and who's responsible for delivering the product.
A single report rattled chip stocks and spooked investors
After the Financial Times report landed, tech stocks took a hit, with chip stocks dropping several percent. The selloff shows how jittery the market has become and how tightly it tracks the two biggest US AI companies. That nervousness may also help explain why Anthropic is moving cautiously on its IPO and why OpenAI has already pushed its own public offering to next year.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently blamed the delay on safety risks, but the postponement was already in the works well before the cybersecurity incidents of recent months. Back in April, reports surfaced that OpenAI had missed its internal growth targets.
OpenAI still growing fast and hunting for fresh capital
Separately, OpenAI expects to actually hit an annualized revenue rate of at least $70 billion by the end of 2026, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI shared the figures during talks about a new funding round, Bloomberg says. The main driver is its expanding enterprise business, with overall annualized revenue growing 77 percent in the third quarter and enterprise revenue jumping 107 percent, CNBC reports.
The company is negotiating at least 1.4 trillion. In March, [OpenAI raised up to 852 billion.
All of this feeds back into the AI bubble debate. Can revenue growth at AI companies keep pace with their massive spending commitments on compute buildouts over the long run? That will likely hinge on measurable productivity gains that companies can actually point to.
Original article from September 29, 2026:
ChatGPT now reaches 1.2 billion people every week, OpenAI says
**OpenAI is nearing a 65 billion in July and may now match or exceed OpenAI's. Anthropic is preparing an IPO as early as November.
OpenAI's growth is driven by enterprise sales and an aggressive price war against Claude and Chinese models, a strategy the company doubled down on with the just-launched GPT-6.1-Sol. The Codex coding assistant is also growing fast, riding the popularity of the GPT-6 model family.
At DevDay, OpenAI shared updated usage numbers: more than 1.2 billion weekly ChatGPT users, over 35 million weekly ChatGPT Work and Codex users, and 2.5 million businesses on OpenAI products. The big question is whether revenue can grow fast enough to cover the massive data center bills.