OpenAI's $20 Billion Revenue Gap Rattles AI Trade as $NVDA and $ORCL Fall on Oct. 8

OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, roughly $20 billion below the nearly $70 billion figure that had been widely reported, according to the Financial Times.
Reuters reports the gap mainly reflects differences in how OpenAI and Anthropic calculate revenue. Anthropic includes income from cloud partners such as $GOOGL's Google Cloud and $AMZN's AWS, while OpenAI excludes comparable partner sales. The higher figure reportedly reflected an effort to make OpenAI's numbers comparable to Anthropic's.
AI infrastructure stocks fell on Oct. 8, according to MarketWatch:
- $NVDA fell 2.9%
- $ORCL dropped 5.5%
- $MU declined 4.8%
- $AMD, $AVGO, and $INTC also fell sharply
- The Nasdaq Composite closed the afternoon down almost 1.3%
OpenAI's growth remains rapid. It entered 2026 with roughly $20 billion in annualized revenue, up from about $6 billion in 2024. Reuters reported that OpenAI generated about $6.7 billion in quarterly revenue in the second quarter, while Anthropic generated approximately $11.5 billion, and that Anthropic's annualized revenue passed $65 billion in July. Both companies are reportedly preparing for eventual IPOs.