OpenAI's quarterly revenue crossed $10 billion for the first time in the three months to September, according to reports, a milestone that puts the ChatGPT maker on an annual revenue run rate of roughly $50 billion. The surge came with a catch: the company's operating loss widened to $10.9 billion in the same quarter, a reminder that the artificial intelligence boom is still being bought with enormous spending.
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| The OpenAI logo. The company reported quarterly revenue above $10 billion for the first time, according to reports. |
The Numbers Behind the Milestone
The figures were shared with investors on a call on Tuesday, November 10, and first reported by The Information, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, according to multiple reports. OpenAI is a private company and has not publicly confirmed the numbers, so they rest on reporting of what investors were told rather than on audited financial statements.
Even with that caveat, the scale of the jump is striking. Revenue of more than $10 billion in the third quarter represents an increase of almost 50 percent from the $6.7 billion the company recorded in the second quarter, and nearly three times the level of a year earlier. The acceleration is a sharp change of pace from the first half of the year, when growth between the first and second quarters was about 18 percent, with revenue rising from $5.7 billion to $6.7 billion.
Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar called it a "blockbuster quarter," according to reports of the investor call, and put the company's annual revenue run rate at roughly $50 billion.
The growth was driven by steady demand for ChatGPT subscriptions, a stronger enterprise business selling access to OpenAI's models through its application programming interface, and cloud computing partnerships, according to the reporting. Tighter pricing, discounts that brought in new customers, improving models and a sharper focus on products for businesses were also credited with lifting sales.
A Recovery After a Slower Start to the Year
The third-quarter result lands after a year in which OpenAI's growth had appeared to cool. Earlier in 2026, the company's expansion was more measured, and questions had begun to surface about whether the breakneck growth of the ChatGPT era was settling into something more ordinary.
The new figures suggest otherwise. A near-50 percent quarterly jump at this scale is unusual for a company of OpenAI's size, and it arrives at a moment when the wider AI industry is under intense scrutiny from investors. Shares in AI-related companies have swung sharply in recent weeks as markets weigh whether the vast sums being poured into data centers, chips and power will pay off.
That debate was on display this week. Cloud computing firm CoreWeave reported strong third-quarter results, with revenue up 168 percent, and its shares surged, reviving confidence in AI-related stocks and lifting the broader market. Analysts are also watching the debt loads funding the buildout. CoreWeave's debt, for example, swelled to $46.9 billion in three months, according to reports.
OpenAI sits at the center of that spending wave. Its models run on enormous computing infrastructure, and the cost of training frontier models and serving hundreds of millions of users every day is one of the largest bills in the technology industry.
Growth Is Still Expensive
For all the revenue growth, OpenAI remains far from profitable. Its operating loss widened to $10.9 billion in the third quarter, from $10.1 billion in the previous quarter, according to documents seen by The Wall Street Journal.
There was, however, an improvement in the rate at which the company loses money relative to its sales. OpenAI's adjusted operating margin narrowed to negative 109 percent in the third quarter, from negative 150 percent in the second quarter. In plain terms, the company is still spending more than twice what it takes in, but the gap is closing as revenue grows faster than costs.
The costs are dominated by computing. Training new models requires vast clusters of specialized chips, and running ChatGPT for a user base that OpenAI says numbers more than a billion people means paying for enormous amounts of processing power around the clock. The company has also been signing long-term deals for data center capacity and power, locking in spending years ahead.
That spending is not unique to OpenAI. Across the industry, the leading AI companies are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to infrastructure, betting demand will keep growing fast enough to justify the outlay, but the latest results show how much of the bill is still being paid out of losses rather than profits.
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| File photo: OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman speaks at a TechCrunch event. |
The Rivalry With Anthropic
OpenAI's milestone arrives in the same week that its chief rival, Anthropic, began the roadshow for its initial public offering, and the comparison between the two companies is striking.
Anthropic reported third-quarter revenue of about $17 billion, according to reports, substantially ahead of OpenAI's figure, and claims an annual run rate of about $81 billion. The two companies count revenue differently, however: Anthropic includes sales made by its cloud partners, while OpenAI reports only its share of some partner sales, so the numbers are not directly comparable.
Anthropic is expected to list on the Nasdaq on November 19, and reports this week said its shares were already being resold at a premium ahead of the listing. The offering has been one of the most closely watched market events of the year, and its progress is being read as a test of investor appetite for AI companies that, like OpenAI, are growing fast while losing money.
The rivalry between the two firms has become one of the defining contests in the AI industry. Both are racing to build more capable models, win enterprise customers and secure the computing power needed to train the next generation of systems. OpenAI was the first to commercialize AI chatbots at mass scale, but Anthropic has taken a lead in parts of the enterprise market, according to industry reporting.
What This Means
The $10 billion quarter matters for two reasons. First, it shows that demand for AI is still accelerating, not plateauing. After a slower first half of the year, OpenAI's growth rebounded sharply, driven by paying subscribers and business customers rather than by one-off deals. That suggests the market for AI services is deepening, with companies and consumers alike willing to pay for it.
Second, it underlines how expensive the AI race remains. A company can take in more than $10 billion in three months and still lose more than that in the same period. The improving margin, from negative 150 percent to negative 109 percent, points in the right direction, but OpenAI is still a long way from breaking even.
For the wider economy, the figures feed into the central question hanging over the AI boom: whether the enormous capital spending on data centers, chips and power will produce returns, or whether it is building toward a correction. Strong revenue growth at the industry's leading companies supports the optimistic case; widening losses support the cautious one.
The results also come as policymakers in Washington continue to debate the future of AI regulation, competition and the supply of advanced chips. OpenAI's scale, and its deepening ties to cloud providers and chipmakers, make it a central player in those discussions, whether the subject is export controls, energy use or the concentration of computing power in a handful of companies.
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| File photo: A person holds a smartphone showing the ChatGPT app. OpenAI says more than a billion people use its products. |
What Happens Next
The next test for OpenAI will be whether the growth can be sustained into the fourth quarter and beyond. The company has not said when, or whether, it expects to become profitable, and its spending commitments on computing infrastructure continue to grow.
Investors and analysts will also be watching Anthropic's listing on November 19, which will give the public markets their first direct read on how a large AI model company is valued. A strong debut would bolster the case that the AI boom has further to run. A weak one would raise fresh questions about the economics of the entire sector.
For OpenAI itself, the coming months are likely to bring new model releases, further enterprise deals and more scrutiny of its costs. The $10 billion quarter proves the company can generate revenue at a scale few technology firms have ever reached. The $10.9 billion loss in the same quarter shows the harder problem it still has to solve: turning that revenue into a business that pays for itself.
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