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OpenAI Tells Investors Revenue Run Rate Is Near $50 Billion, Below Earlier $70 Billion Reports

October 8, 2026 at 14:43 EDT

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OpenAI has told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, about $20 billion below the $70 billion figure that circulated days earlier. The revision turns a growth story into a measurement fight, because rival Anthropic's reported run rate is calculated differently.

Oct. 8, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI's Revenue Run Rate Gets Recut

The AI lab told investors annualized revenue was approaching $50B, not the roughly $70B figure that had circulated days earlier. The gap puts revenue definitions, cloud channels and compute spending back under scrutiny.

Latest run rate

$50B

Earlier figure

$70B

Difference

$20B

Anthropic July run rate

$65B

The reported run-rate gap

Each stacked block represents $10B of annualized revenue.

$50Blatest figure

$70Bearlier figure

Why the discrepancy matters

Run-rate math

A short recent period is projected over a full year.

Partner channels

Cloud partner sales are not counted the same way across labs.

Compute pressure

Growth must eventually cover infrastructure and model costs.

What still holds

A near-$50B run rate, more than 900M weekly ChatGPT users and heavy API usage still show a large commercial footprint.

What is under scrutiny

Investors now have to judge whether usage growth, revenue definitions and compute spending can support public-market expectations.

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