Citing documents OpenAI gave to investors, the Financial Times reported that the company's annualized revenue was close to $50 billion as of the end of September, far below the roughly $70 billion widely circulated in the market.
- An expectations gap, not a slowdown: The $70 billion figure was not OpenAI's official number but a "restatement" made by investors trying to compare OpenAI directly with Anthropic — Anthropic counts revenue routed through channels such as AWS and Google Cloud as its own, while OpenAI counts only its direct revenue. OpenAI's growth is in fact strong: annualized revenue has grown more than 70% since the start of Q3, overall Q3 growth was 77%, and enterprise growth was 107%.
- Sharp market reaction: The news sent US AI stocks lower across the board. The Nasdaq closed down 1.25% (its worst performance since mid-August) and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 3.39%. Nvidia dropped about 3%, and Intel and Oracle fell more than 5%.
- A trillion-dollar valuation window: OpenAI is at a critical stage of building its valuation, and any revision to the numbers gets magnified into market questions about the pace of AI commercialization.
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