Recently, according to reports from media outlets such as the Financial Times and Axios, OpenAI's annualized revenue through the end of September was approximately $50 billion. The previously reported figure of nearly $70 billion mainly stemmed from differences in accounting standards among companies regarding revenue recognition through partner sales. For example, when Anthropic sells through cloud partners, it records the full amount paid by the customer and counts the share as an expense, whereas OpenAI only counts its own share as revenue in certain partner transactions. Both methods comply with U.S. GAAP standards.

Despite differences in measurement, OpenAI's overall business is still expanding rapidly. According to reports from Bloomberg and CNBC, its total annualized revenue for the third quarter grew by 77% year-over-year, with enterprise revenue rising sharply by 107%. Driven by this growth, the company expects its actual annualized revenue to reach at least $70 billion by the end of 2026. Currently, ChatGPT has more than 1.2 billion weekly users, while the enterprise product ChatGPT Work and the coding assistant Codex have over 35 million weekly users each, serving 2.5 million businesses.

With strong business growth, OpenAI is actively engaging in new fundraising negotiations, aiming to raise at least $30 billion in new capital with a pre-money valuation target of $140 billion. Looking back to March of this year, the company had raised up to $12.2 billion, with a post-money valuation of $85.2 billion at that time.

However, the significant funding needs have sparked widespread discussions in the market. After the release of related financial reports, tech stocks, particularly chip stocks, fell by several percentage points, reflecting the cautious and concerned attitude of the capital market toward whether the high computing power expenditures in the AI industry can keep pace with revenue growth. In the long run, whether AI companies can maintain sustainable development under the pressure of large data center bills ultimately depends on whether enterprises can deliver truly measurable productivity improvements.