- OpenAI spent about $34 billion over the past year, far more than the year before, per journalist Ed Zitron with figures confirmed by the Financial Times.
- Roughly $19 billion went to R&D and nearly $6 billion to sales and marketing; revenue came in around $13 billion.
- Net loss jumped from $5 billion to about $39 billion — but roughly $30 billion was a one-time, non-cash accounting charge.
- Strip that out and the operating loss sits near $8 billion, as OpenAI prepares an IPO that could value it above $1 trillion.
What Happened
OpenAI spent about $34 billion over the past year, far more than the year before, The Decoder reported. The figures come from independent journalist Ed Zitron and were independently confirmed by the Financial Times.
Against that spending, revenue came in at roughly $13 billion, with monthly revenue reaching $2 billion by year’s end — up from about $1 billion per quarter at the close of 2024.
Why It Matters
The numbers put hard figures on the cost of competing at the AI frontier just as OpenAI prepares to go public. It recently filed confidentially for an IPO that could value the company above $1 trillion — a valuation investors must now weigh against a business spending more than twice its revenue.
Technical Details
The spending breaks down to roughly $19 billion on R&D and nearly $6 billion on sales and marketing. The headline figure is the net loss, which jumped from $5 billion to about $39 billion. The Financial Times attributes most of that to a one-time, non-cash accounting charge of roughly $30 billion tied to OpenAI’s earlier corporate structure. Stripping it out leaves an operating loss near $8 billion — large, but a different story than the $39 billion headline implies.
Who’s Affected
Prospective IPO investors are the most directly affected, needing to separate the accounting charge from the underlying burn. Competitors are watching too: the spending mirrors the capital intensity behind Anthropic’s $965 billion valuation and the broader infrastructure arms race. OpenAI’s backers absorb the losses on the bet that revenue — doubling to a $2 billion monthly run rate — keeps climbing.
What’s Next
The disclosure sharpens scrutiny ahead of OpenAI’s planned listing. The figure to track is the gap between the ~$8 billion operating loss and the $13 billion revenue base: if revenue growth continues at its current pace, the burn looks like investment; if it stalls, the same number looks like a warning. The IPO filing will eventually force audited clarity on which it is.
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