OpenAI's Q3 revenue tops $10B for the first time as operating losses widen to $10.9B

OpenAI's latest financials show fast growth with even faster spending. Q3 revenue reached $10B, up 50% from the previous quarter and the first time the company has passed $10B in a quarter. Operating losses widened to $10.9B, meaning OpenAI spent about $2 for every $1 it brought in, largely on compute for training and serving models.

The revenue comes mainly from ChatGPT subscriptions, enterprise seats and API usage, and OpenAI is clearly looking for new sources. In the same period it opened Businesses in ChatGPT, letting companies claim verified listings and see how ChatGPT's 1.2 billion weekly users engage with them. Days later it launched ChatGPT Wallet for agentic shopping. Both point toward commerce and advertising-style revenue on top of subscriptions. OpenAI also announced Control Room, a tool for tracking and stopping running AI workloads, aimed at enterprises that want governance over agents.

The comparison with Anthropic is unavoidable this week. Anthropic's IPO disclosures show Q3 revenue of about $17B and an $81B run-rate, well ahead of OpenAI's reported quarter, though Anthropic has its own enormous compute commitments of nearly $900B, according to community analysis of its filings. For years OpenAI was assumed to lead on revenue; these numbers complicate that.

The skeptical reading is that losses at this scale depend on continued access to capital at high valuations, and they raise the stakes for products like Wallet and Business Agents to monetize the user base. Bulls point to 50% quarterly growth. Watch Q4 results for margins, how much revenue comes from commerce, and whether OpenAI makes its own public-listing plans as Anthropic prices its offering.