EquitiesMarket noteSunday 11 October 2026, 00:40
OpenAI's revenue is $50bn, not $68bn, and AI stocks paid for the gap
OpenAI told investors its annualised revenue was about $50bn at the end of September, well short of the $68bn widely reported. CoreWeave fell nearly 8% and Oracle almost 6%.
By The Notebook Desk
OpenAI makes less money than investors had been told. The company said in an investor presentation that its annualised revenue was about $50bn at the end of September, CNBC confirmed on Thursday, after the Financial Times first reported the figure. A number of $68bn had been widely reported late last month. The gap is $18bn, more than a quarter of the higher figure.
The news hit the companies that sell OpenAI its computing power hardest. CoreWeave shares fell nearly 8% on Thursday, Oracle almost 6% and Nvidia 3%. Intel lost 5%, Super Micro Computer nearly 5%, and Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom 4% each.
Not lost sales, but a different count
OpenAI did not lose $18bn of business. The $68bn figure included gross revenue from OpenAI’s partners, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. Counted that way, the number is easier to set beside the figure of Anthropic, OpenAI’s main rival, which told investors its annualised revenue reached $65bn at the end of July. On OpenAI’s own count, it is well behind. That fits a trend: as we reported on 30 September, Anthropic overtook OpenAI this spring on revenue and valuation.
Annualised revenue takes the sales of a recent period, often a single month, and scales them up to a full year. For a company that grows fast it is a fair guide to where sales are heading. But there is no standard rule for it, private companies do not have to publish it, and two companies can count it in different ways. Investors in both firms have been comparing numbers that were not built the same way.
The gap with reported revenue can be large. Anthropic’s revenue for the whole of 2025 was $4.6bn, and it made a net loss of $42bn, Reuters reported from a leaked copy of its prospectus, as cited by CNBC. Its run rate today is many times that. Growth that fast makes run rates useful, and also easy to stretch.
OpenAI’s growth is still fast. Its run rate rose 77% during the third quarter, and 107% in its business with companies, the person told CNBC.
The price of each dollar of sales
What changed on Thursday is the price investors pay for that growth. OpenAI is valued at $852bn. Against $68bn of annualised revenue, that is about 12.5 times sales. Against $50bn, it is 17 times, by our calculation.
That matters because OpenAI needs more money. It closed a $122bn funding round in March and is in early talks about another, which could raise around $30bn, CNBC has reported. It filed its prospectus confidentially in June and is expected to list in 2027. Sam Altman, its chief executive, said in September that “right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public”.
Why the suppliers fell most
The stocks that fell hardest were those whose order books lean on OpenAI. CoreWeave rents out data centres full of Nvidia chips, and its contracts with OpenAI reached about $22.4bn after a third expansion in September 2025, CoreWeave said at the time. Oracle also sells OpenAI cloud capacity. If OpenAI’s sales grow more slowly than its suppliers hope, more of those bills must be paid with new investors’ money or with debt.
The wider market took the news in its stride. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.25% on Thursday to 27,193.34, its largest fall since 18 August, according to the index data. It had closed at a record 27,599.89 on Tuesday. On Friday it rose 0.64% to 27,366.17 and won back about half the loss. The S&P 500 fell 0.47% on Thursday and gained 0.59% on Friday.
One industry carries much of the market
A revenue figure at one private company can move the Nasdaq because so much of the US economy now rests on AI spending. Spending on data centre construction rose 73% in a year while the rest of private building shrank, and AI-related deals made up more than half of net investment-grade bond supply this year, as we report separately today. All of it assumes that the AI companies’ sales keep growing fast enough to pay for it.
What to watch next
The price of OpenAI’s next funding round will show how much the revised figure has cost it. Anthropic is also preparing to list, and its prospectus, once public, will give audited figures that can be set against the run rates. The big cloud companies report third-quarter results in the coming weeks, and their spending plans for 2027 will show whether the gap has changed their minds.
Disclosure
This is analysis and opinion, not investment advice.