Analysis
OpenAI's revenue reached about $10 billion in the third quarter of 2026, up roughly 50% from about $6.7 billion in the second quarter, according to internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and reported on November 11 by Forbes via Yahoo Finance.
OpenAI's adjusted operating loss grew to about $10.9 billion from $10.1 billion in the same documents. That makes OpenAI's quarterly loss larger than its quarterly sales, eight days before Anthropic, its closest rival, is expected to start trading on Nasdaq.
The ratio is moving the right way even as the dollar loss grows. OpenAI's adjusted operating margin improved to negative 109% in the third quarter from negative 150% in the second, per the same report, and the loss rose by about $800 million while revenue rose by roughly $3.3 billion.
“OpenAI's adjusted operating loss grew to about $10.9 billion from $10.1 billion in the same documents.”
Dataconomy puts OpenAI's annualized run rate at about $50 billion and quotes CFO Sarah Friar clarifying that an earlier 70% growth figure referred to run rate, not reported quarterly revenue.
Where OpenAI's revenue comes from now
The mix flipped this quarter. President Greg Brockman said enterprise sales became OpenAI's largest revenue source in the third quarter, ahead of consumer ChatGPT subscriptions, and Friar said enterprise revenue doubled from the prior quarter while consumer sales rose 20%, per Forbes. Dataconomy describes the split as roughly even. Pulse's earlier coverage of OpenAI's $11 billion tranche put enterprise at about 40% of revenue, so the business has moved fast toward selling to companies, the market Anthropic has led with its Claude models.
What OpenAI does
OpenAI was founded in San Francisco in December 2015 as a nonprofit by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman and others, per Wikipedia. A 2025 restructuring turned its operating arm into OpenAI Group PBC, 26% owned by the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation. It sells ChatGPT subscriptions, API access to its GPT models, the Codex coding agent and enterprise software.
Value Add VC data
OpenAI's funding history, as verified this run:
- Oct 2024, capital raise -- $6.6B at $157B (Wikipedia)
- Apr 2025, funding round -- $40B at $300B post-money, led by SoftBank (Wikipedia)
- Mar 2026, funding round -- $122B at $852B post-money, with Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank the largest commitments (Tech Funding News)
- Nov 2026, first tranche -- $11B at $1.25T, below the $1.4T OpenAI sought (Tech Funding News)
The $1.25 trillion mark is about 1.47 times the $852 billion March valuation.
Against roughly $10 billion of quarterly revenue, it is about 31 times an annualized $40 billion. Run-rate estimates differ by outlet and date: Dataconomy puts OpenAI's run rate at about $50 billion, while Pulse's earlier coverage relayed a figure near $70 billion as of September from Tech Funding News.
How OpenAI compares with Anthropic
Anthropic's IPO filing shows third-quarter revenue of $16.96 billion, up 47% from the prior quarter, with an operating loss of $567 million, per Forbes and Dataconomy. On those numbers OpenAI's quarterly revenue is about 59% of Anthropic's and its operating loss is roughly 19 times larger.
Pulse covered Anthropic's $70-$78 IPO price range this week. Pricing is expected around November 18, with trading as early as November 19 under the ticker ANT, per Dataconomy.
The caveat: OpenAI's figures are adjusted numbers from internal documents seen by one newspaper, not audited results, and Anthropic's come from an SEC prospectus. Forbes notes the two sets are not directly comparable. OpenAI has also not published how much of the loss is compute.
When could OpenAI go public?
Friar told employees in August that OpenAI "will be a public company in 2027," and the company filed confidentially in June, Forbes reports. That timeline makes this quarter's numbers the start of OpenAI's IPO story.
Public investors will look at Anthropic's operating loss, about 3% of its quarterly revenue on the filing's figures, and at OpenAI's loss of more than 100% of revenue. OpenAI is still raising: about $9 billion of its roughly $20 billion round was left to close after the first tranche, per Tech Funding News. The fourth-quarter margin is the number that will tell late-stage buyers whether negative 109% keeps improving or has stopped.