The FT says the discrepancy arose from investor adjustments intended to compare OpenAI’s revenue with Anthropic’s.
OpenAI’s annualized revenue approached $50 billion at the end of September, about $20 billion below the figure previously reported by the Financial Times and other outlets, according to investor documents reviewed by the FT.
The discrepancy reflects differences in how OpenAI and Anthropic calculate annualized revenue. According to a person familiar with the matter cited by the FT, OpenAI investors attempted to adjust its figures to make a direct comparison with its rival.
Anthropic includes revenue from sales through cloud partners such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. OpenAI does not include those sales in the same way, the report said.
Attempts to adjust OpenAI’s figure upward led to reports that its annualized revenue reached $40 billion in August. OpenAI subsequently told investors revenue had grown more than 70%, leading to the reported $70 billion figure.
