OpenAI is growing at a pace few technology companies have matched. It is also still spending far more than it earns, according to new figures that arrive just as investors weigh the economics of the whole artificial intelligence industry.
The ChatGPT maker’s revenue rose about 50 percent to $10 billion in the third quarter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing documents shown to investors. Reuters relayed the report. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Growth with a wide gap
The company’s adjusted operating margin improved to minus 109 percent from minus 150 percent in the previous quarter, according to the documents. In plain terms, OpenAI lost about $1.09 for every dollar of revenue, compared with $1.50 a quarter earlier.
That is progress, but the absolute loss still grew. Operating losses widened to $10.9 billion from $10.1 billion. Revenue is rising quickly, yet costs are rising nearly as fast.
Separate reporting has used other accounting measures. Earlier figures that included stock-based compensation put the second-quarter operating loss higher, at $12.3 billion. The numbers are therefore not always directly comparable.
The scale of the business
The latest quarter’s revenue is close to OpenAI’s entire 2025 total, which leaked financial documents put at about $13 billion. Presentation slides from SoftBank, an investor in OpenAI, reportedly put the company at roughly $50 billion in annualised revenue as of September.
Advertising is a newer contributor. ChatGPT passed a $1 billion annualised run rate in ads in August, according to trade reports, after OpenAI began testing ads in February. Industry reports also say ChatGPT has more than 1.2 billion weekly users, though the company has not confirmed that in recent filings.
Why costs remain so high
Training and running frontier AI models requires enormous computing power, and OpenAI has committed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure through 2030, according to press reports. The company was valued at $852 billion after a $122 billion funding round earlier this year.
Analysts have noted that, at its current cost base, OpenAI would need several times its present revenue to break even. Whether the business can reach that scale before investors lose patience is one of the central questions in technology.
A market-wide test
The disclosure lands at a sensitive moment. This week, rival Anthropic opened the roadshow for its Nasdaq debut with a price range of $70 to $78 a share and a valuation of up to about $1.4 trillion. SoftBank, one of OpenAI’s largest backers, reported a $7 billion quarterly loss on Tuesday. CoreWeave, which rents computing power to AI developers, raised its forecast while carrying heavy debt.
Taken together, the results show strong demand and large revenues alongside high costs and expensive financing. Reuters noted that investor appetite for AI companies remains strong despite concerns about profitability.
What to watch next
Several measures will indicate whether OpenAI’s trajectory is sustainable:
- Whether the adjusted operating margin keeps improving at a similar pace.
- Whether new products, including advertising and enterprise tools, add high-margin revenue.
- How investors price Anthropic’s listing, which will set a public-market benchmark for the sector.
- Whether OpenAI itself moves toward a stock market listing.
A 50 percent jump in quarterly revenue is a remarkable achievement. The harder test is whether growth can outrun costs on a timeline that investors, and lenders, will accept.
Disclosure for editors: Anthropic, mentioned in this article, is the developer of the Claude AI assistant. This article is for information only and is not investment advice.
