OpenAI's Quarterly Revenue Hit $10 Billion for the First Time as Growth Re-Accelerated to 50%, but the Operating Loss Still Grew to $10.9 Billion

OpenAI's quarterly revenue crossed the $10 billion mark for the first time in the three months ending September, up nearly 50% from the previous quarter and almost threefold from a year earlier, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to Bloomberg, and financial details the company shared with investors on a Tuesday call. The Wall Street Journal and Reuters reported figures consistent with those documents. OpenAI, which remains private, declined to comment, and none of the numbers are publicly filed or audited.

The profitability trend is real but the absolute losses keep growing. OpenAI told investors its adjusted operating margin improved from -150% in the second quarter to -109% in the third, even as the operating loss widened to $10.9 billion from $10.1 billion. In other words, each dollar of revenue loses far less than it did a quarter ago, but the dollar total being lost still went up because the company is spending faster than it grows.

Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar called it a blowout quarter and said the annualized revenue run rate has reached roughly $50 billion. She attributed the acceleration to frontier research momentum and, above all, the enterprise business, which she said doubled in the quarter and pushed the split between business and consumer revenue toward parity.

The enterprise push is being organized rather than improvised. OpenAI recently appointed Dali Rajic as its first chief revenue officer, and Friar pointed to coding tools, a cybersecurity offering, and the Dots enterprise agent platform as the products driving enterprise adoption. She also said small and medium business revenue grew faster in the quarter than in the previous six quarters combined, and argued that Anthropic's enterprise playbook shows the power of third-party cloud distribution, a door she suggested was previously constrained by the Microsoft Azure relationship and could become a significant tailwind in 2027.

The consumer side is still the volume engine. Friar said consumer sales grew 20% quarter over quarter, paid subscriptions passed 100 million, and weekly active users stand at 1.2 billion. The contrast with Anthropic, which disclosed $17 billion of third-quarter revenue and a $567 million operating loss in its IPO filings last week, frames the stakes: OpenAI is growing faster again, but it is running a consumer-scale cost structure against a rival that is nearly profitable on enterprise revenue alone.

The week could hardly be more consequential for the sector's finances. Anthropic began its IPO roadshow the same day with a price range implying up to roughly $1.4 trillion, and OpenAI's leaked-in-part numbers will be read as both a rebuttal and a warning: growth is re-accelerating, margins are improving fast, and the burn is still measured in tens of billions a year.