OpenAI is seeking a major new round of funding while reporting rapid growth in revenue, especially from enterprise customers. But the figures attracting attention do not all measure revenue the same way: a September estimate near $70 billion was later clarified by a roughly $50 billion figure, with the difference tied to accounting treatment for sales through cloud partners.
Funding talks and ambitious revenue targets
OpenAI is negotiating to raise at least $30 billion in new capital at a target pre-money valuation of $1.4 trillion. The company shared revenue projections during those funding discussions, according to Bloomberg.
OpenAI expects its annualized revenue rate to reach at least $70 billion by the end of 2026. That is a forecast, not a reported result for the year. The company’s enterprise business is a central part of the growth picture: overall annualized revenue grew 77 percent in the third quarter, while enterprise revenue increased 107 percent, CNBC reports.
The company has also raised capital before. In March, OpenAI raised up to $122 billion at a post-money valuation of $852 billion. The current negotiations would add to that financing as the company pursues continued growth.
Why revenue estimates differ
An earlier report placed OpenAI near a $70 billion annualized revenue rate, up about 70 percent since the start of Q3. The metric projects current monthly revenue across a full year, so it offers a snapshot of pace rather than a guarantee of future income.
On October 9, 2026, an update cited the Financial Times for a different figure: roughly $50 billion at the end of September. The earlier, higher number was calculated to make OpenAI’s revenue more comparable with Anthropic’s, Axios reports.
The distinction comes down to how the companies account for partner sales. Anthropic records the full customer payment for sales through cloud partners as revenue, then records the cloud provider’s portion as an expense. OpenAI counts only its own share as revenue for certain partner deals.
Both approaches comply with US GAAP standards, according to Axios. The accounting depends on a company’s role in a transaction, including who controls the customer relationship and who is responsible for delivering the product. As a result, headline comparisons can obscure differences in what each company includes as revenue.
Enterprise demand and wider usage
OpenAI’s enterprise sales are one reported source of momentum. The September article also described a price war against Claude and Chinese models, and said OpenAI had doubled down on that strategy with the launch of GPT-6.1-Sol. Its Codex coding assistant was also growing quickly, alongside the popularity of the GPT-6 model family.
At DevDay, OpenAI shared usage figures that pointed to a broad customer base: more than 1.2 billion weekly ChatGPT users, over 35 million weekly ChatGPT Work and Codex users, and 2.5 million businesses on OpenAI products. These counts describe usage and adoption; they do not, by themselves, show how much revenue those users or businesses generate.
Investors weigh growth against costs
The revenue reports also affected the market. After the Financial Times report, technology stocks fell and chip stocks dropped several percent. The reaction illustrated how closely investors are tracking the largest US AI companies and how sensitive the market can be to changes in reported growth.
OpenAI’s fundraising plans and revenue projections feed into a broader debate over whether AI companies can sustain their spending on compute and data center capacity. The central question is whether revenue growth can keep up with those commitments over time. The source points to measurable productivity gains as one factor that could help answer it.
For now, the figures show both strong reported expansion and uncertainty about how to compare it. OpenAI’s projected annualized revenue, enterprise growth and customer reach all indicate momentum, while the accounting differences and scale of infrastructure spending complicate the picture investors are trying to assess.