OpenAI revenue exceeds $40 billion ahead of IPO
OpenAI has reached an annual revenue run rate of over $40 billion, roughly doubling that figure compared with the end of 2025. The acceleration of the business comes as the ChatGPT developer prepares for a potential stock market listing, Bloomberg reports citing informed sources.
This refers not to revenue actually earned over the year, but to the revenue run rate — a metric that projects the company's current income level onto a yearly period. At the end of 2025, OpenAI had more than $20 billion of such annual revenue run rate. The company had previously officially reported that the figure grew from $2 billion in 2023 to $6 billion in 2024 and to more than $20 billion in 2025.
According to Bloomberg, OpenAI's revenues have accelerated in recent months, notably thanks to rising demand for AI-based programming tools. Additional contribution comes from paid subscriptions, the main consumer business and a new advertising segment.
OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman said in an internal company message that in July alone the annual revenue run rate grew by more than 20% compared with the previous month.
One of the drivers was AI agents, in particular Codex for working with software code and ChatGPT Work for a broader range of work tasks. OpenAI is simultaneously lowering prices for some models as it tries to compete for customers sensitive to the cost of using AI.
OpenAI is engaged in fierce competition with Anthropic for corporate clients. According to Bloomberg, both companies have already confidentially filed documents for a stock market listing. Anthropic may hold an IPO as soon as this autumn and overtake OpenAI.
Meanwhile, Anthropic said in May that its annual revenue run rate exceeded $47 billion. It is difficult to compare the two companies' figures directly since they may use different methodologies for calculating run rate.
Rapid revenue growth is important for OpenAI ahead of a potential IPO, but the company is simultaneously incurring huge costs for computing infrastructure. OpenAI itself has previously explained that expanding available computing capacity directly supports growth in product usage and monetisation.
