OpenAI’s annualised revenue is about $20 billion (£15bn) less than was reported only days ago, the reported, citing financial documents shared with investors.

The gap is due to efforts by OpenAI’s own investors to account for revenues in a way that’s more directly comparable to similar figures from Anthropic, the paper said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Even so, the discrepancy is likely to force a reconsideration of the growth in demand for AI services, which is in turn a key factor driving hundreds of billions in infrastructure spending and the growth of US equity markets.

Accounting methods

OpenAI recently told investors it is approaching $50bn in annualised revenues as of the end of September, the report said.

That’s far short of the $70bn that was widely reported late last month, based on information provided to investors.

Anthropic and OpenAI record revenue in different ways, with Anthropic booking as revenue the full value of contracts offered through cloud marketplaces, and recording the platforms’ large portion of such deals as a marketing cost, an arrangement OpenAI said inflates Anthropic’s revenues by billions of dollars. Anthropic says the arrangement follows established accounting practices.

OpenAI investors’ efforts to produce a more direct comparison resulted in a reports that the company’s annualised revenue was around $40bn in July, the report said.

OpenAI later told investors that its annualised revenues had jumped more than 70 percent since July, prompting reports that the figure had reached $70bn by the end of September, which OpenAI didn’t deny.

Rapid growth

But the new presentation reportedly shows a $30bn revenue run rate as of July.

The figures still show a remarkable rate of growth, with OpenAI’s revenue run rate roughly tripling as of July compared to the $10bn in annualised revenues the company disclosed in June of last year.

Recent reports said OpenAI’s business-to-business revenue had grown more than 100 percent from July 2026 to the end of September, as it challenges Anthropic for business clients.

The two loss-making AI labs also have massive spending commitments, however, with Anthropic’s IPO prospectus showing it has $518bn in future cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations, according to Reuters.

OpenAI similarly has hundreds of billions of dollars in such obligations, spending that’s currently funded by its own revenues and investors’ funds.

Anthropic and OpenAI are both expected to hold IPOs in the coming weeks.