OpenAI Quarterly Revenue Crosses $10 Billion for the First Time — But Losses Grew Too
OpenAI's quarterly revenue crossed $10 billion for the first time in the third quarter of 2026, up nearly 50% on the previous quarter and almost three times the level of a year ago. The milestone shows a business growing at extraordinary speed. It also comes with a second number that points the other way: the company's adjusted operating loss widened to $10.9 billion in the same quarter.
Both figures are reported, not audited. Bloomberg reported them on 11 November 2026, via TechCrunch, from figures OpenAI shared with investors on a call the previous day — and OpenAI declined to comment. That status matters: these are the numbers the company is showing its own investors, not numbers it has published for the public. This article reports them as reported, and says so wherever they appear.
The headline numbers
Revenue in the third quarter of 2026 — July to September — crossed $10 billion for the first time. That is up nearly 50% from $6.7 billion in the second quarter, and almost three times the revenue of the same quarter a year earlier. On an annualised basis, the revenue run rate stood at about $50 billion at the end of September, according to Bloomberg.
Run rate needs a definition, because it is easy to misread. A run rate takes the revenue pace of a recent period and stretches it over a full year. It is not the same as full-year revenue, and it assumes the current pace holds. OpenAI's $50 billion run rate says the company was selling at a $50-billion-a-year pace as September ended — not that it has banked $50 billion this year.
The figures were shared with investors on a call on 10 November. The speakers named in the reporting were president Greg Brockman, chief financial officer Sarah Friar, and product leader Thibault Sottiaux. Chief executive Sam Altman was not named as a speaker on the call in the sources used for this article, and this article does not claim he was.
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Losses grew — but the margin improved
The second half of the story is the cost of that growth. OpenAI's adjusted operating loss widened to $10.9 billion in the third quarter, from $10.1 billion in the second quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal. In absolute terms, the company lost more money than it did three months earlier.
Look at the same numbers as a margin, though, and the picture shifts. The adjusted operating margin narrowed to minus 109% in the third quarter, from minus 150% in the second. In plain terms: for every dollar of revenue, OpenAI lost about $1.09 in the third quarter, against $1.50 in the second. The loss is growing in dollars because the business is growing; as a share of revenue, it is shrinking.
That distinction is the core of the debate about OpenAI's economics. The company is spending enormous sums on computing power, staff and infrastructure to keep its growth rate up, and the question investors keep asking is whether the revenue curve will eventually bend above the cost curve. A margin improving from minus 150% to minus 109% is movement in the right direction. A $10.9 billion quarterly loss is still a $10.9 billion quarterly loss.
| Measure | Q2 2026 | Q3 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $6.7bn | Crossed $10bn |
| Revenue growth vs prior quarter | — | Nearly +50% |
| Adjusted operating loss | $10.1bn | $10.9bn |
| Adjusted operating margin | −150% | −109% |
| Annualised revenue run rate (end of quarter) | — | ~$50bn |
The Anthropic comparison
OpenAI's numbers land in the same week as Anthropic's IPO filing, and the comparison is striking. Anthropic reported third-quarter revenue of about $17 billion and a run rate of about $81 billion at the end of October — ahead of OpenAI on both measures for the quarter. That is a reversal of the picture many readers will carry in their heads, in which OpenAI is the runaway revenue leader of the AI labs.
Two caveats belong with that comparison. First, the companies report differently: Anthropic's figures come from a public SEC filing, while OpenAI's are reported from an investor call and the company declined to comment. Second, revenue is only one measure of strength. OpenAI's product reach, its enterprise deals and its developer platform — including the OpenAI Decisions API for agents — are not captured in a single quarter's revenue line. But on the numbers as reported, Anthropic is ahead on the quarter, and that is a real shift in the competitive story.
The rivalry is also visible in the models themselves. Our flagship AI model comparison sets the leading systems against each other, and Anthropic's IPO — covered in our report on the Anthropic IPO filing — means both companies' economics will now be judged in public, side by side, on a regular timetable.
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What this means for the AI boom
OpenAI crossing $10 billion in a quarter is a genuine milestone: very few software companies in history have reached that pace, and almost none have done it while roughly tripling year on year. It is evidence that demand for AI products — subscriptions, business tools and developer services — is real and paying, not just promised.
At the same time, a $10.9 billion quarterly loss is evidence of how expensive that demand is to serve. The compute behind each answer, each image and each agent run costs real money, and OpenAI is spending ahead of its revenue to hold its position. The improving margin suggests the spending is getting more efficient; the widening absolute loss says the spending is still growing faster than the business can yet fund it.
That tension is exactly what the wider market is arguing about. Our earlier examination of whether the AI bubble is bursting looked at a brutal week for AI stocks, and OpenAI's numbers feed both sides of that argument: the revenue growth says the boom is real, and the losses say it is expensive. Both can be true at once.
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Key Takeaways
- OpenAI's Q3 2026 revenue crossed $10 billion for the first time, up nearly 50% from $6.7 billion in Q2 and almost 3x the year-ago quarter.
- The figures are REPORTED (Bloomberg via TechCrunch, 11 Nov 2026), not audited — shared with investors on a call on 10 November; OpenAI declined to comment.
- Adjusted operating loss widened to $10.9 billion from $10.1 billion in Q2 (Wall Street Journal), but the adjusted operating margin improved to −109% from −150%.
- Annualised revenue run rate was ~$50 billion at end of September — a pace, not full-year revenue.
- Anthropic reported Q3 revenue of ~$17 billion and a run rate of ~$81 billion — ahead of OpenAI on the quarter, on the figures as reported.
- Speakers on the investor call were Greg Brockman, Sarah Friar and Thibault Sottiaux; Sam Altman was not named as a speaker in the sources.
Conclusion
OpenAI has now done what no AI lab had done before: more than $10 billion of revenue in a single quarter, growing nearly 50% in three months. The milestone is real, and so is the cost behind it — a $10.9 billion operating loss that widened even as the margin improved. The company's economics are moving in the right direction on efficiency and the wrong direction on absolute losses, and both facts will be true until the revenue curve finally overtakes the spending curve. With Anthropic now reporting bigger quarterly revenue and heading for the public markets, the race between the two labs is no longer just about models. It is about who can turn scale into profit first.
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