OpenAI Revenue 2026: $25B ARR, $2B a Month, and a -122% Margin

OpenAI hit $25 billion in annualized revenue by the end of February 2026, but it still loses $1.22 for every dollar it earns.

That's the short answer. The longer answer is that OpenAI just raised $122B at an $852B valuation, filed a confidential S-1, and got passed on revenue by Anthropic in the same quarter — three things that don't usually happen to the same company at once.

OpenAI Revenue 2026: The ARR Numbers So Far

OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate reached $25 billion by the end of February 2026, up 17% from the $21.4 billion run rate it closed 2025 with. On an actual booked-revenue basis, the company generated $13.1 billion in full-year 2025 revenue, and it's now running at roughly $2 billion a month, having crossed the $1 billion-a-month mark for the first time in October 2025. Internally, OpenAI has told investors it's targeting $30 billion in revenue for full-year 2026.

The growth curve is the story: $2 billion ARR in 2023, $6 billion in 2024, past $20 billion by the end of 2025, and $25 billion two months into 2026. Few companies in software history have compounded revenue this fast at this scale — but the scale is also what makes the loss numbers below so large in absolute dollars. Track how this compares to the rest of the market on our AI Valuations dashboard.

Is OpenAI Profitable? The Margin Picture

No — OpenAI posted a -122% non-GAAP operating margin in Q1 2026, meaning it lost about $1.22 for every dollar of revenue booked. That's before accounting for the enormous compute commitments layered onto the balance sheet: the $500B Stargate infrastructure buildout with SoftBank and the roughly $13B Microsoft partnership commitment both sit alongside a revenue base that, even at $25B ARR, is still a fraction of the compute spend required to serve it.

Revenue growth and margin have moved in opposite directions for three straight years, and that's the central tension in the company's confidential S-1 filing, submitted June 8, 2026. Public-market investors underwriting a 2027 listing will have to decide whether a -122% margin at $25B in revenue is a temporary training-cost bulge or a structural feature of frontier-model economics.

OpenAI's $852B Valuation and Who's Funding It

OpenAI closed a $122 billion funding round on March 31, 2026 at an $852 billion post-money valuation — up from roughly $300 billion twelve months earlier, close to a 3x jump in a single year. Amazon led with a $50 billion commitment, followed by Nvidia and SoftBank at $30 billion each, with Microsoft also participating alongside its existing partnership.

Figures blended from The Information, CNBC, Forbes, and OpenAI's own disclosures, Q4 2025 through Q1 2026. ARR is run-rate, not booked annual revenue.

OpenAI vs. Anthropic Revenue: Who's Actually Winning in 2026?

This is the twist in OpenAI's 2026 revenue story: Anthropic passed it. Anthropic's ARR climbed from $1 billion in December 2024 to $30 billion by the end of March 2026, then reportedly hit $47 billion by mid-May 2026 — nearly double OpenAI's $25 billion. The driver is Claude Code, which now commands roughly 54% of the AI coding market and has become the fastest-growing product line in either company's history.

Anthropic is also reportedly closer to its first profitable quarter, with Q2 2026 guidance implying $10.9 billion in quarterly revenue against a funding round said to value the company near $900 billion — within range of OpenAI's $852 billion. Revenue leadership and valuation leadership are no longer the same company. See the broader picture on our Big Tech Earnings dashboard.

What This Means for Investors and Founders

The headline number — $25B ARR — is real growth by any historical software benchmark. But three data points matter more for anyone underwriting exposure to OpenAI in 2026: the -122% operating margin shows the unit economics haven't turned, the $122B round shows investors are still willing to fund the gap, and Anthropic's $47B ARR shows OpenAI's lead in absolute revenue is gone, even if its valuation lead (for now) is not.

For founders building on top of either platform, the practical read is that both companies are burning capital to hold market share, which means pricing and API terms are more likely to shift in the next 12 months than to stay flat. For LPs and secondary buyers, the June 8 confidential S-1 filing is the signal to watch — it's the clearest indication yet that OpenAI's own board sees a public listing, not another mega-round, as the next funding mechanism once the 2027 window opens.