What the new documents show
The Financial Times reports that OpenAI recently told investors its revenue was approaching $50 billion on an annualized basis at the end of September. That is about $20 billion below the figure the FT and other outlets reported late last month from information provided to investors.
Annualized revenue is a run-rate estimate: it projects a recent pace of sales across a full year. It is not the same as revenue already booked for the year, and private companies such as OpenAI are not required to publish regular financial statements.
Why the figures differ
A person familiar with the matter told the FT that investors had tried to make OpenAI's number directly comparable with Anthropic's. The companies count cloud-channel sales differently. Anthropic includes revenue from sales through partners such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not.
That effort to "gross up" OpenAI's figure reportedly produced an estimate of about $40 billion for July. OpenAI later told investors that annualized revenue had risen more than 70% since July, which led them to calculate roughly $70 billion for September. The newer presentation instead put July's annualized revenue near $30 billion.
The lower base changes the comparison, but it still implies rapid growth over the summer. OpenAI declined to comment to the FT.
Investors reacted quickly
Technology shares extended their declines after the report. The FT said the Nasdaq 100 was down 1.7% on Thursday, while Nvidia fell 2.9%, Oracle nearly 6% and Micron 4%. A Dow Jones report carried by Morningstar recorded similarly broad intraday losses among companies tied to AI spending.
Those moves reflect how closely public-market expectations have become linked to the spending and growth of private AI companies. The new figures narrow the revenue picture, but they remain reported run-rate estimates from investor materials rather than audited public results.
