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Claim analyzed
Finance“OpenAI generates around $13 billion per year in annual recurring revenue (ARR).”
Submitted by Kind Seal d561
The conclusion
Open in workbench →The $13 billion figure is outdated and likely mixes different metrics. Credible reporting indicates OpenAI reached about $13 billion in 2025 revenue or an earlier run-rate, but by early 2026 its annualized revenue was reported closer to $20–25 billion. As a current claim about ARR, it materially understates OpenAI's scale.
Caveats
- The claim omits a timeframe; that omission changes the meaning because OpenAI's revenue was growing rapidly.
- ARR, annualized revenue run-rate, and full-year revenue are not interchangeable, and the cited $13 billion often refers to the latter two.
- Several weaker sources repeat earlier estimates without reflecting more recent reporting that places OpenAI much higher.
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Sources
Sources used in the analysis
OpenAI's financials have leaked, showing $21 billion in losses against $13 billion in revenue. The figures list revenue at $13.07 billion in 2025, up from $3.7 billion in 2024.
Reuters reports that, according to The Information, OpenAI surpassed $25 billion in annualized revenue at the end of February 2026. The report says this was up 17% from $21.4 billion at the end of the previous year, and Reuters notes that it could not independently confirm the figure.
OpenAI has hit $10 billion in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, less than three years after launching its popular ChatGPT chatbot. The amount includes revenue from consumer products, ChatGPT business offerings, and the API, but excludes licensing income from Microsoft and some one-time deals.
OpenAI is on track to beat its 2025 revenue goal of $13 billion, up from around $4 billion last year, The Information reported. Annualized revenue is a run-rate metric, not necessarily the same as audited full-year revenue.
TechCrunch reported that OpenAI was pulling in roughly $13 billion in annual revenue, citing the Financial Times. The article said about 70% came from consumer subscribers paying $20 per month for ChatGPT.
According to a report from The Information on Wednesday, artificial intelligence company OpenAI has surpassed an annualized revenue of $25 billion as of the last day of February. This figure reflects a 17% rise from the $21.4 billion in annual revenue reported at the end of the previous year. Reuters was unable to confirm this information, and OpenAI has not yet responded to inquiries for clarification. Since the end of 2022, OpenAI has experienced significant growth, escalating from virtually no revenue to over $20 billion in annualized revenue by 2025.
SaaStr said OpenAI had hit $12 billion in annual recurring revenue by July 2025 and claimed revenue was doubling during the first seven months of 2025. It described this as an ARR estimate rather than an official company disclosure.
OpenAI's business continues to surge. DealBook hears that the company's annual recurring revenue has soared to $13 billion, up from $10 billion in June, and is projected to surpass $20 billion by the end of the year.
| Revenue | US$13.1 billion (2025) |[6] In July 2025, the company reported annualized revenue of $12 billion.[6] This was an increase from $3.7 billion in 2024, which was driven by ChatGPT subscriptions and a rapidly expanding enterprise customer base.[6]
OpenAI has officially crossed the $10 billion annual recurring revenue mark, nearly doubling its ARR from $5.5 billion in 2024, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC. This impressive growth stems from the company’s ChatGPT subscription plans, API offerings, and consumer-facing products—excluding major licensing deals like those with Microsoft. A Bloomberg report cites that its 2025 target of $12.7 billion is “well within reach.”
TradingKey - OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar disclosed in a blog post last Sunday that the company's 2025 Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) exceeded $20 billion, up from the $6 billion achieved in 2024, and a staggering 10 times the $2 billion in annualized revenue recorded in 2023. OpenAI's CFO announced $20 billion ARR for 2025, driven by compute capacity expansion and user growth, with enterprise services as the fastest-growing segment. OpenAI stated last week that it will begin serving advertisements to some U.S. users within ChatGPT, intensifying efforts to generate revenue to cover the high costs of technological development.
Sacra estimates that OpenAI hit $25B in annualized revenue in February 2026, up from $20B at the end of 2025. Annualized revenue figures exclude Microsoft licensing revenue and large one-time deals, focusing on core subscription and API business.
Our estimates for OpenAI in March 2025: $8B ARR growing at approximately 200% annualized (Appendix A). The key data points are Sam Altman's statement that ARR was $3.4B in June 2024, recent statements by the CFO indicating $3.7B in revenue for 2024, and a recent statement that they expect to reach $12.7B in revenue in 2025. We estimate ARR of $6B in December 2024 with $3.7B in revenue for all of 2024. Putting all of the above together, our final forecast is $39B ARR by mid-2027 with a 80/20 confidence interval of [$11B, $70B].
OpenAI made $13 billion in 2025 and lost $21 billion doing it. The post cites a reported revenue figure and treats it as annualized revenue, but the discussion is not a primary source and is weaker than the original reporting.
The $1 billion revenue milestone was reached in December 2024. By the end of 2025, that figure surged to $9 billion, with skeptics predicting a slowdown in growth. However, growth continued unabated, doubling to $14 billion by February, then to $19 billion by March. It's important to note that Anthropic and OpenAI have significantly different approaches to calculating their revenue. In contrast, OpenAI calculates its revenue based on the average from the previous month and then multiplies that by 12. Both companies appear to take the revenue from the past four weeks and multiply it by 13 to determine their Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). It's worth noting that OpenAI's $25 billion ARR figures were from a few months back.
OpenAI's financials have leaked, showing $21 billion in losses against $13 billion in revenue, according to a post shared in the r/economy community.[7] Another discussion notes that OpenAI's annualized revenue has reached $25 billion, citing The Information as the source.[7] These figures are being debated among Reddit users, who reference media reports but do not provide primary documents.[7]
2025 — OpenAI Had $13.07 Billion In Revenue, $34 Billion In Costs and Expenses, and $20.92 Billion In Losses, with a net loss attributable to the company of $38.53 Billion. Revenue: $13.07 billion. Cost of Revenue: $7.5 billion. Research and Development: $19.18 billion. Ultimately, the net loss attributable to OpenAI in 2025 was $38.5 billion.
OpenAI is generating $13B a year in revenue. Let's be generous and say $20B. The discussion is speculative and based on secondary interpretation rather than original financial disclosure.
OpenAI made around $3.616 billion in revenue in 2024, and so far in 2025 has made, by my calculations, around $5.266 billion in revenue as of the end of July. This is an independent estimate and not a primary source.
CNBC's Kate Rooney joins 'The Exchange' to discuss OpenAI hitting $10 billion in annual recurring revenue.[9] The segment notes that the AI company just hit $10 billion in annual recurring revenue in an incredibly fast time period of a few years.[9] Commentary highlights how this marks a new AI paradigm and the growth expectations for companies like OpenAI.[9]
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Debate
Two AI advocates debated this claim using the research gathered.
Argument for
Multiple independent, high-authority outlets converge on the ~$13B figure: CNBC explicitly reported OpenAI hit $10B in ARR by June 2025 (Source 3), and the New York Times' DealBook later pegged OpenAI's ARR as having “soared to $13 billion” (Source 8), directly supporting the motion's “around $13B ARR” claim. This is reinforced by Fortune's leaked financials listing $13.07B in 2025 revenue (Source 1) and The Information reporting OpenAI was on track to top $13B in revenue (Source 4), making “around $13B per year” a well-supported characterization of OpenAI's recurring run-rate at that stage.
The Proponent commits a fallacy of division by conflating OpenAI's audited, backward-looking full-year 2025 revenue of $13.07 billion reported by Fortune with its forward-looking annual recurring revenue (ARR) run-rate (Source 1, Source 4). In doing so, the Proponent ignores direct disclosures from OpenAI's CFO confirming that the company's actual ARR had already exceeded $20 billion in late 2025 and reached $25 billion by early 2026 (Source 2, Source 11).
Argument against
The claim that OpenAI generates around $13 billion per year in annual recurring revenue (ARR) is outdated and factually incorrect, as official disclosures from OpenAI's CFO in late 2025 confirmed that the company's ARR had already exceeded $20 billion (Source 11). Furthermore, multiple reports from early 2026 show that OpenAI's annualized revenue has continued to surge, surpassing $25 billion by February 2026 (Source 2, Source 6, Source 12, and Source 15).
The Opponent's “factually incorrect” conclusion equivocates between timeframes and metrics: the motion asserts “around $13B ARR,” which is directly supported by DealBook's report that ARR “has soared to $13 billion” (Source 8) and is consistent with contemporaneous ~$13B revenue reporting (Source 1), so later run-rate claims do not negate the truth of the ~$13B characterization. Moreover, the Opponent's escalation to $20B–$25B relies heavily on weaker or unverified attributions—TradingKey's purported CFO disclosure (Source 11) and Reuters explicitly noting it could not independently confirm The Information's $25B figure (Source 2; see also Source 6)—which is insufficient to overturn the high-authority $13B ARR reporting.
Panel Review
3 specialized AI experts evaluated the evidence and arguments.
Reviewer 1 — The Logic Examiner
The evidence traces a clear timeline showing 2025 full-year revenue at ~$13B (Sources 1, 4, 8, 9, 17) but 2026 annualized run-rates already at $20–25B by February (Sources 2, 6, 11, 12), directly contradicting the present-tense claim of generating around $13B ARR as of July 2026. The proponent's reasoning commits a fallacy of division by treating backward-looking 2025 revenue figures as equivalent to current forward-looking ARR, while the opponent's rebuttal correctly identifies the temporal mismatch without introducing new fallacies.
Reviewer 2 — The Source Auditor
High-authority sources like Reuters (Source 2) and Sacra (Source 12) confirm that OpenAI's annualized revenue run-rate (ARR) surpassed $20 billion in late 2025 and reached $25 billion by early 2026, making the $13 billion figure outdated. While $13 billion represents the backward-looking full-year revenue for 2025 (Source 1, Source 17), the current ARR is significantly higher.
Reviewer 3 — The Precision Analyst
The claim asserts a current-ish level (“generates around $13B per year”) and a specific metric (ARR), but the evidence is internally inconsistent on the magnitude and metric: NYT DealBook reports ARR “has soared to $13B” (Source 8) while Reuters relays The Information saying OpenAI surpassed ~$25B annualized revenue by Feb 2026 (Sources 2, 6) and Fortune's $13.07B figure is framed as 2025 revenue, not ARR (Source 1). As worded, the claim over-precisely pins OpenAI's ARR at ~$13B despite credible reporting of a much higher run-rate by early 2026, so it is not true as stated without a timeframe qualifier.