OpenAI's revenue jumped 50%. What did the startup learn from Anthropic?

OpenAI's revenue in the third quarter increased by nearly 50% compared to the second quarter, reaching $10 billion, while its annual run rate reached approximately $50 billion. The company's CFO, Sarah Fryar, shared this information in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

Revenue growth accelerated significantly: it had been 18% the previous quarter. According to Fryar, sales grew thanks to the advanced research and enterprise business segments. The AI giant’s revenue in the enterprise segment doubled quarter-over-quarter, and OpenAI’s sales are now split evenly between the enterprise and consumer segments. This is driven by products such as Coding and Cyber, as well as the adoption by companies of virtual assistants like the Dots AI agent platform, Fryar said.

Sales in the small and medium-sized business segment rose more sharply in the third quarter than in the previous six quarters combined, she added.

The consumer segment also continues to grow: sales were up 20% compared to the previous quarter. The number of subscribers exceeded 100 million, and the number of weekly active ChatGPT users reached 1.2 billion.

After falling behind rival Anthropic on some metrics earlier this year, OpenAI is regaining ground thanks to new, competitive AI models, aggressive price cuts, and an increased focus on AI agents, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI’s business is showing signs of accelerating growth at a time when Anthropic’s revenue growth has begun to slow somewhat. Anthropic’s revenue in the third quarter totaled about $17 billion. Its growth rate relative to the second quarter slowed to about 47% from 140% previously, the agency notes, pointing out that the two AI startups use different methods for calculating financial metrics.

Anthropic’s success in the enterprise segment, according to Fryar, showed her that OpenAI needs to focus on securing distribution agreements with third-party cloud providers. “We were somewhat limited by the terms of our contract with [Microsoft] Azure,” she explained. “Anthropic showed me the power of this model, and I believe it could be a very strong tailwind for us in 2027.”

OpenAI is wrapping up a new round of funding at a valuation of $1.25 trillion after postponing its plans to go public until next year. Anthropic expects to be valued at $1.4 trillion when it goes public in November.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor