Annual Revenue of 13 Billion, Paying 17.2 Billion to Microsoft: The Truth Behind AI's Money-Burning in OpenAI's Leaked Ledger
Leaked OpenAI financial documents from June 2026 revealed that in 2025, the company achieved $13.07 billion in revenue, a 253% growth from 2024. However, this was accompanied by an operational loss of $20.92 billion and a net loss of roughly $8 billion. Despite ChatGPT surpassing 900 million weekly active users, the "burn rate" remained high: for every $1 earned, $1.60 was spent.
The cost structure shows $34 billion in total costs. R&D was the largest expense at $19.18 billion, which included $10.59 billion paid to Microsoft. Compute costs for model inference were $7.5 billion, with sales and marketing at $5.73 billion. Notably, total payments to Microsoft reached $17.2 billion, accounting for over 50% of OpenAI's total costs and exceeding its annual revenue, highlighting a significant structural burden.
This high-cost, high-loss model is an industry-wide trend. xAI reported a 2025 operational loss of $6.4 billion against $3.2 billion in revenue, spending $3 for every $1 earned. Anthropic, with a reported $90 billion annualized revenue by late 2025, also faced pressure with a 40% gross margin, lower than expected due to high inference costs. Combined, these top three firms' operational losses surpassed $30 billion in 2025.
OpenAI's vast user base presents a monetization challenge. With only about 50 million of its 900 million weekly users paying (a ~5.6% conversion rate), the compute cost of serving free users is substantial. This contrasts with strategies like Anthropic's, which focuses on premium pricing for enterprise clients.
The industry's path to profitability hinges on dramatically reducing marginal costs, particularly for inference, through innovations in specialized chips or model efficiency. Until then, massive capital inflows—like OpenAI's $122 billion funding round in March 2026—remain essential to fund the relentless pursuit of scale and advanced capabilities.
marsbit06/18 03:59
