OpenAI told investors its September annualized revenue was nearly US$50 billion, below the nearly US$70 billion it had previously indicated for that month, a person familiar with the matter said.

The gap mainly came from an effort to compare OpenAI with Anthropic.

Anthropic includes sales through cloud partners and the related fees, while OpenAI excludes sales through partners such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

Anthropic pays those cloud partners about 16% of the revenue earned through them.

Those partner sales made up half of Anthropic’s revenue last year, according to an analysis.

Partner-channel revenue may be recognized net rather than gross, depending on whether the seller controls the service before it is transferred to customers, according to PwC’s accounting guidance.

Annualized revenue projects sales from a recent period over 12 months rather than reporting actual annual revenue, and can overstate revenue if that period is unrepresentative.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic have been reported to be preparing to go public.

🔗 Source: Reuters

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