OpenAI’s third-quarter revenue reportedly reached roughly $10 billion

OpenAI told investors its third-quarter revenue rose about 50 per cent to roughly $10 billion, MLQ reported on 10 November. The private AI company’s reported growth was faster than the 18 per cent recorded in the second quarter, when revenue reached $6.7 billion.

OpenAI’s growth follows an 18 per cent quarter

The third-quarter figure came from an account of what OpenAI told investors, rather than a published company financial result. MLQ reported that the account was attributed to a person familiar with the matter. It said OpenAI does not publish its financial results and that no other outlet had independently confirmed the number.

Revenue had risen 18 per cent to $6.7 billion in the second quarter from $5.7 billion in the first, Breaking the News reported. Those figures put the reported third-quarter growth rate beside a slower preceding quarter without relying on an annualised revenue measure.

Demand for newer models and enterprise products picked up during the third quarter, according to the account. The report attributed the change in revenue growth to that demand. The reported quarterly total covers OpenAI’s revenue, rather than revenue another company earned from its dealings with OpenAI.

Brockman describes the enterprise rebound

OpenAI president Greg Brockman called the first half of 2026 “pretty rough” at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event. He said annualised revenue grew 70 per cent in the third-quarter rebound and that the enterprise business roughly doubled. Annualised revenue expresses a sales pace over a year; it is a different measure from revenue earned during one quarter.

Brockman credited coding tools with the third-quarter revenue turn, AI Affairs reported. His account of the enterprise business concerned growth during the rebound, while the roughly $10 billion figure concerns OpenAI’s reported revenue across the quarter.

On 29 September, Reuters put OpenAI’s annualised recurring revenue near $70 billion and enterprise sales at more than twice their July level, MLQ reported. That earlier annualised figure and the later quarterly revenue figure describe different periods and measures.

Anthropic files a $17 billion quarter

Anthropic reported $17 billion in revenue for the quarter ended 30 September in an amended S-1 IPO filing made on 10 November. Anthropic’s filed result and OpenAI’s reported figure are not strictly comparable because the accounting basis for OpenAI’s figure is not public.

Microsoft’s $10 billion figure concerns another set of transactions. The company disclosed in October that it earned that amount from commercial arrangements with OpenAI in the quarter ended 30 September, including revenue-sharing payments. It measures Microsoft’s revenue from those arrangements, rather than OpenAI’s revenue from its customers.

OpenAI also reportedly raised $11 billion at a $1.3 trillion valuation in the first close of a new funding round. That valuation accompanied the financing, while the roughly $10 billion quarterly revenue figure came from the account of what the company told investors.