OpenAI’s quarterly revenue reportedly crosses $10B for the first time

The $10 billion tally would represent an almost 50% increase over the $6.7 billion OpenAI reportedly booked in the second quarter. That is a sharp acceleration from the prior pace: revenue grew about 18% between the first and second quarters, on top of a $5.7 billion base. Profitability, while still deeply negative, also moved in the right direction — the adjusted operating margin narrowed from -150% in Q2 to -109% in Q3.

Context matters for the comparison. Anthropic, the Claude maker, has pulled ahead in the enterprise model market and recently reported Q3 revenue of $17 billion. OpenAI's early advantage came from broad consumer reach: the company says it has over a billion users, though the report suggests most are free users or on its cheapest plans. OpenAI has lately leaned on tighter pricing, discounts, improving models, and a greater emphasis on enterprise-focused products and AI agents that help people complete tasks.

On an annualized basis, Bloomberg puts OpenAI's revenue run rate at $50 billion. Anthropic said its run rate grew by $10 billion within a month, reaching $81 billion as of the end of October, while seeking a $1.4 trillion valuation in an IPO that could arrive soon. The two figures are not directly comparable: Anthropic counts sales made by its cloud partners, whereas OpenAI reports only its share of certain partner sales.

Neither company's numbers are small, but both face a crowded field — models from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, plus a wave of cheaper, highly capable open-source models, particularly from China. What to watch next hinges on whether OpenAI's enterprise push can close the gap with Anthropic before that IPO, whether the -109% margin keeps improving as revenue scales, and how the differing revenue definitions hold up under public-market scrutiny.