OpenAI's revenue story got about $20 billion smaller on Thursday. The Financial Times reported that the ChatGPT maker’s annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September.
OpenAI's revenue story got about $20 billion smaller on Thursday.
The Financial Times reported that the ChatGPT maker’s annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September. It was well short of the number previously communicated to investors.
Reuters later confirmed the roughly $50 billion figure, citing a person familiar with the matter. OpenAI had previously indicated a revenue run rate approaching $70 billion, creating what initially appeared to be a sharp downgrade in the company’s growth.
Jim Cramer takes U-turn on Bitcoin (1:59)The headline quickly hit AI-related markets. OpenAI’s cash-settled pre-IPO perpetual contract on Liquid fell from around $1,725 to below $1,600 before recovering. Liquid’s contract provides price exposure to privately held OpenAI rather than ownership of actual shares.
The selloff also spilled into public technology stocks as investors questioned the returns being generated by massive AI infrastructure spending. Nasdaq-100 futures later recovered some of those losses.
The apparent $20 billion gap, however, increasingly looks like an accounting comparison rather than a sudden loss of revenue.
CNBC host Jim Cramer initially pushed back on the market’s interpretation Thursday, saying OpenAI and Anthropic report revenue differently and the figures were not directly comparable.
“Open AI reports revenues differently from Anthropic. This number isn't apples to apples,” Cramer wrote on X.
That was also why he questioned whether the Financial Times report should stand as framed. The earlier $70 billion figure had effectively put OpenAI on a gross-revenue basis comparable with Anthropic, while OpenAI’s own roughly $50 billion figure was reported on a different, net basis.
Reuters said the discrepancy largely came from efforts to compare the two companies using the same methodology.
Tesla Motors CEO and Product Architect Elon Musk, Y Combinator President Sam Altman and The New York Times Financial Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 6, 2015 in San Francisco, California.Getty Images
OpenAI, unlike Anthropic, does not include some revenue generated through cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud. Anthropic counts the full value of those sales before paying its partners their share.
That interpretation gained support Friday after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI still expects to reach or exceed $70 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026, largely driven by its enterprise business.
Cramer later described the episode as an “innocent mistake” stemming from confusion over gross and net revenue, rather than evidence that OpenAI had suddenly lost $20 billion in annualized sales.
Gross v. Net--innocent mistake-Open AI
— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) October 9, 2026
OpenAI-linked markets rebounded after the clarification.
At the time of writing, OpenAI’s OAI contract on Liquid was trading around $1,692.60, after falling as low as $1,591.80 over the previous 24 hours.
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