OpenAI's Annualized Revenue Comes In Near $50B, About $20B Below Reported Figure, Hitting AI Stocks

OpenAI's annualized revenue stood at about $50 billion at the end of September, short of the $68 billion to $70 billion figures that circulated last month, according to reports from the Financial Times and CNBC. AI-linked stocks sold off on Thursday: SentiSense price data showed ORCL down about 5.5%, CRWV down about 7.8% and NVDA down about 2.9% late in the session, while the Nasdaq was down 1.4% in afternoon trading as rising oil prices and Treasury yields also weighed.

The gap is a matter of definition rather than lost sales. The higher number added in gross revenue from partner companies, a method investors used to put OpenAI on an equal footing with Anthropic, which counts sales made through cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud; OpenAI does not count those sales. OpenAI declined to comment to the FT. Its investor presentation still showed third-quarter run-rate growth of 77% across the business and 107% in its enterprise segment, according to CNBC.

The reset matters because OpenAI's revenue is the demand signal behind a large share of AI infrastructure spending, from Oracle's data center buildout to CoreWeave's capacity. OpenAI is seeking to raise around $30 billion in a new funding round after a $122 billion round closed in March, is valued at $852 billion, and lost $38.5 billion in 2025 on $13.07 billion of revenue. It has confidentially filed for an IPO and is targeting a 2027 debut.

Watch whether OpenAI or its partners publish a reconciled revenue figure, how the pending funding round is priced, and whether infrastructure suppliers address their OpenAI exposure on upcoming earnings calls.