OpenAI’s revenue topped $10 billion in a single quarter for the first time — but the company behind ChatGPT lost even more than it made, as the economics of the AI boom came into sharp focus in the same week its great rival Anthropic priced a $90 billion stock market listing.
Key Points
- OpenAI revenue 10 billion — revenue reached $10 billion in the third quarter, up nearly 50% from $6.7 billion in the second quarter and almost three times the level a year earlier.
- The operating loss widened to $10.9 billion from $10.1 billion, though the adjusted operating margin improved from -150% to -109%.
- Anthropic reported about $17 billion in third-quarter revenue with a far smaller operating loss of $567 million, and its IPO is multiple times oversubscribed.
- Anthropic plans to price its shares on Wednesday 18 November at $70 to $78, raising about $90 billion.
The figures were shared with investors on a call on Tuesday 10 November and first reported by The Information, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. OpenAI’s annual revenue run rate is now roughly $50 billion. Consumer sales rose about 20% quarter over quarter, paid subscriptions passed 100 million, and ChatGPT has 1.2 billion weekly active users. Sales of Codex, its coding tool, surpassed the consumer business for the first time to become the company’s largest revenue source.
OpenAI is still far from profitable. Its operating loss widened to $10.9 billion from $10.1 billion in the prior quarter, while its adjusted operating margin improved to -109% from -150%, according to documents seen by The Wall Street Journal. The company has been raising money at a $1.25 trillion valuation — down from plans in September to raise $30 billion at up to $1.5 trillion — and has secured about $11 billion of the round. An IPO once billed as the last chance to get in before a listing has been pushed back to 2027.
The rival that makes money
The comparison with Anthropic is what has investors talking. The maker of Claude reported about $17 billion in third-quarter revenue, according to its amended S-1 filing, with an operating loss of only $567 million — and its planned listing is multiple times oversubscribed, according to Bloomberg. Anthropic filed confidentially in June, made its S-1 public on 26 October, and updated its prospectus on 10 November with a price range of $70 to $78 per share. At the top of the range its market value would be about $1.02 trillion, though bankers are weighing a price above the range after heavy demand, and some reports put the valuation sought at up to $1.4 trillion.
The comparison needs an asterisk: the two companies count revenue differently. Anthropic counts partner sales gross, while OpenAI books only its share — and OpenAI’s loss excludes $2.6 billion of stock pay that Anthropic includes. Even so, the shape of the two businesses is now strikingly different. Anthropic’s enterprise API market share rose from 40% to 55% while OpenAI’s rose from 27% to 31%, according to a November report from Anthropic investor Menlo Ventures, and a JetBrains survey of more than 15,000 professional developers showed Claude Code gaining ground fast.
The numbers land in the same week that the wider AI trade has been shaken by the crisis at Nvidia, whose chips power both companies. Wall Street spent Wednesday celebrating artificial intelligence — CoreWeave surged about 25% after an upbeat outlook and the S&P 500 rose 1.31% — and then watched the company at the centre of it lose its footing after the close. Whether the revenue is real is no longer the question for either AI lab. Whether it covers the massive bill is.
For background on Anthropic, see our report on Anthropic launching Claude Fable 5.2 ahead of its planned IPO, and on the Nvidia chip scandal. More in our Business section.
Sources: Business Today, “OpenAI’s revenue hits $10 billion, but its losses are still staggering at $10.9 billion” (https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/openais-revenue-hits-10-billion-but-its-losses-are-still-staggering-at-10-9-billion-567033-2026-11-12); Dealroom, “OpenAI tops $10B in quarterly revenue for the first time” (https://dealroom.co/news/171463-openai-tops-10b-in-quarterly-revenue-for-the-first-time-up-50-as-operati/).