OpenAI's Third-Quarter Operating Loss Nearly Matched Its $10 Billion in Revenue

The figures matter because OpenAI is raising money from private investors at a $1.25 trillion valuation while its main rival, Anthropic, markets shares to the public in an offering that discloses its finances in full. OpenAI does not publish financial statements, so outside investors are relying on numbers the company shares with its backers and that reach the press.

Earlier on Tuesday, The Information reported, citing a person familiar with the matter, that OpenAI had told investors its third-quarter revenue rose about 50% to roughly $10 billion. That followed a slower second quarter, in which OpenAI's operating loss was reported at $12.3 billion on $6.7 billion of revenue.

The loss leaves OpenAI's adjusted operating margin at about minus 109% in the third quarter, compared with about minus 150% in the second, according to an account of the figures by Crypto Briefing. That publication said most of the improvement came from faster revenue growth rather than lower costs. It also reported that enterprise revenue doubled from the previous quarter to roughly half of the total, and that consumer subscriptions passed 100 million. Nakoda News has not seen the Journal's underlying figures, and OpenAI has not commented publicly on them.

OpenAI's growing loss contrasts with the scale its competitor now reports. Anthropic's IPO filing puts its quarterly revenue close to $17 billion, and Goldman Sachs' models for the listing, described to Bloomberg by a person briefed on them, show Anthropic also burning cash until 2030 because of compute spending.

For OpenAI, the open question is how long investors will keep funding losses of this size. Its current fundraising round is the next test of that.