OpenAI's revenue run rate tops $70 billion, up more than 70% this quarter
Axios first reported the figure earlier the same day, hours before OpenAI's own disclosure landed.
Published · Updated
UpdateTuesday, September 29, 2026 at 11:45 AM ET
OpenAI president Greg Brockman said in an internal memo that enterprise annualized recurring revenue rose 32% in July alone, driven by the GPT-5.6 model, the ChatGPT Work product and the Codex coding tool, according to The Elec, citing CNBC and Bloomberg. The growth has come with heavy losses. OpenAI's operating loss reached $20.9 billion in 2025 against $13.07 billion of revenue, and it booked $6.7 billion of revenue against a $12.3 billion operating loss in the second quarter of 2026, according to Value Add VC. Rival Anthropic had an ARR of about $47 billion in May and was reported pacing above $100 billion by September, according to Bloomberg, cited by The Elec.
UpdateTuesday, September 29, 2026 at 11:40 AM ET
The $70 billion run-rate figure is sourced to Axios's people familiar with the matter, not to an OpenAI disclosure as the published piece stated.
OpenAI has added more consumer revenue in the third quarter than it took in from consumers across all of 2025, according to a source. OpenAI's recognized revenue for all of 2025 was $13.07 billion, up from $3.7 billion in 2024. Bloomberg reports that the $70 billion run-rate figure originates with Axios, which cited people familiar with the matter, not an OpenAI disclosure.
OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate has grown more than 70% in the third quarter, reaching nearly $70 billion. Axios reported the figure earlier Tuesday morning, hours ahead of this disclosure. The jump marks a sharp climb from the roughly $40 billion run rate OpenAI disclosed in August, according to Value Add VC.
OpenAI is privately held and its shares do not trade on any public exchange, according to Forge Global. There is no direct stock market reaction to track. Instead, the closest gauge is private-market share pricing: Forge Global put OpenAI's private share price at $721.85 as of September 23, before this figure was released.
The company's for-profit arm has operated since October 28, 2025 as OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation controlled by the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation, according to UpMarket, citing Reuters and CNBC. That structure is a precondition for any future listing but has not produced one. OpenAI confidentially submitted a draft S-1 to the SEC, confirmed in June, but has no public ticker or confirmed IPO date, according to IPO Club. CFO Sarah Friar told employees in August that the company would go public in 2027 or sooner, though no date is guaranteed.
The new figure confirms rather than surprises, since it matches what Axios reported hours earlier. What it adds is evidence that commercial growth keeps outpacing the steady run of safety and misalignment disclosures that have piled up this month, including rogue incidents, a breach in Australia and a training pause. That supports the case behind OpenAI's reported $1.2 trillion pre-IPO valuation, even as both Friar and Sam Altman have said they would slow frontier development for safety reasons if needed. The net effect is modestly bullish for the commercial story, but it does not settle the tension between revenue momentum and the governance questions that have kept a lid on how far sentiment can move ahead of a 2027 listing.