OpenAI Revenue Nears $50 Billion, $20 Billion Below September Reports

Nasdaq 100 Loses 300 Points After the Note

OpenAI has told investors that annualized revenue neared $50 billion by the end of September, roughly $20 billion below the figure widely reported a month earlier, and the Nasdaq 100 dropped more than 300 points inside roughly half an hour once the news crossed trading screens on Thursday afternoon. Reports on September 29 had put the Sam Altman-led firm's annualized run-rate near $70 billion. The lower number comes from a note the company circulated to investors, summarized as it spread across trading desks. The move ranked among the session's sharpest, and it began minutes after the figure started circulating.

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Summarized as it spread across trading desks.

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Annualized revenue takes a company's current sales pace and stretches it across a full year, so the figure projects momentum rather than money already booked. Neither disclosure amounted to an official earnings release; the revised figure reached the market through the investor note itself. The gap still landed hard in a market already positioned nervously. Nasdaq 100 futures had been down 0.5% in early Thursday trading, the 30-year US Treasury yield traded at levels last seen more than two decades ago, and Brent crude pushed past $100 per barrel amid Middle East supply fears. AI borrowing formed a third weight on sentiment. Broadcom is lining up more than $50 billion of financing to fund a custom chip it is developing alongside OpenAI. Michael Burry has argued publicly that markets must fall far enough to shut out the coming wave of artificial intelligence listings. Skeptics of the trade have spent recent weeks arguing that AI valuations rest on revenue lines no auditor treats consistently. Revenue at OpenAI and Anthropic is read as the clearest gauge of demand for AI, because it drives how much computing infrastructure gets built. On Thursday, two ways of counting that same sales pace sat $20 billion apart.

The pre-IPO OPENAI instrument changes hands at $1,642.25, down 3.69% over the past 24 hours after a session range of $1,577.00 to $1,722.40, and COINOTAG's composite scoring frames the map around it. The nearest resistance sits at $1,732.39 and scores 86 out of 100. The nearest support, at $1,548.84, scores 66 out of 100 and is marked in part by a Fibonacci retracement level. Positioning stays light: perpetual open interest holds near $25.2 million, with funding at 0.0050% per interval. The daily trend reads sideways and the MACD signal is bearish, leaving the instrument capped below the $1,732.39 ceiling.

Two Accounting Methods, $20 Billion Apart

The discrepancy traces to how each lab books sales, not to any sudden shift in demand. Anthropic, which is preparing its own Nasdaq listing, books revenue earned through cloud partners including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud inside its own line. OpenAI does not recognize those partner-channel sales and bills only customers it serves directly. Cloud partners such as Amazon and Google resell model access under their own brands, which is why the treatment of those sales varies between labs. Most large enterprise buyers procure model access through existing cloud agreements, so the partner channel carries substantial weight. Investors who restated OpenAI's figures on Anthropic's basis produced the higher $70 billion estimate that circulated last month.

Jim Cramer pressed the same point as the note spread, noting that the two companies report revenue differently and that the comparison is not apples to apples. The company itself told investors revenue expanded by more than 70% during the period covered by the note, a pace few businesses of any size match. Audited documents put OpenAI's revenue for all of 2025 at $13.07 billion, a base the current run-rate implies has multiplied several times over. The accounting choice matters beyond one afternoon of selling, because whether partner resale dollars appear in reported revenue changes how investors value forward demand for AI capacity. It also shapes how each lab's progress is judged between funding rounds, when annualized figures do much of the talking. The debate lands as Anthropic readies its listing, since its partner-inclusive figure will sit directly beside OpenAI's in investor models. No reconciliation of the two methods has been published; the $13.07 billion 2025 base and the 70%-plus growth rate are the hard numbers both camps share.

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Jim Cramer.

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