OpenAI's revenue exceeds $10 billion in a quarter for the first time, but Anthropic maintains its lead

More than $10 billion in a quarter for the first time

OpenAI's quarterly revenue has exceeded $10 billion for the first time — Bloomberg reports this, citing anonymous sources, followed by TechCrunch. If the figures are confirmed, this represents growth of almost 50% compared with $6.7 billion in the second quarter, whereas growth between the first and second quarters was, according to earlier reports, about 18%. The company has also reached an annual revenue run rate of $50 billion.

Losses are shrinking, but more slowly than revenue is growing

According to the same sources, the company's financial position is improving on another metric as well: the adjusted operating margin narrowed from -150% in the second quarter to -109% in the third. In other words, OpenAI still spends noticeably more on operations than it earns, although the gap is narrowing. TechCrunch emphasizes that the company never had trouble growing revenue before: 18% on a base of $5.7 billion is a very high figure by the standards of most software businesses; the problem was that its main competitor was growing even faster.

Lagging behind Anthropic in the enterprise segment

Anthropic, the developer of Claude, has taken a leading position in the enterprise market for AI models and reported revenue of $17 billion for the third quarter. OpenAI, for its part, claims more than a billion users, but, as TechCrunch notes, it is reasonable to assume that most of them are free users or subscribers on the cheapest plans. According to the outlet, OpenAI has recently benefited from a combination of tougher pricing, discounts, improved models, and greater attention to enterprise products and AI agents that help complete tasks.

Run rates and a caveat about the counting methodology

The competitors' figures are not directly comparable: Anthropic said its annual run rate grew by $10 billion in a month and reached $81 billion by the end of October, and the company is preparing for an IPO with a target valuation of $1.4 trillion. At the same time, OpenAI and Anthropic calculate annual revenue differently: Anthropic counts sales made by its cloud partners, whereas OpenAI counts only its own share of sales made through partners. In addition, both companies compete with models from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, as well as with cheaper but capable open-source models, especially from China.