OpenAI’s balance sheet leaked, and it’s hard to know what to think.
A combination of blogger Ed Zitron and the Financial Times reported that OpenAI’s 2025 financials look, well, pretty rough.
A few key (reported) numbers to turn over in your head:
In 2025, OpenAI’s revenue came out to $13.07 billion, up from $3.7 billion in 2024. That makes enough sense—ChatGPT, a consumer blockbuster, this month hit one billion global active monthly users. (The company was last valued at $852 billion.) More concerning are the company’s expenses and losses: In 2025, OpenAI’s total costs and expenses came out to a staggering $34 billion (up from $12.48 billion in 2024). Likewise, losses from operations reached $20.92 billion in 2025, up from $8.78 billion in 2024.
I’ll state the obvious: By any normal rules of accounting and expectations from giant companies, these numbers look bad. That’s especially true if you consider rival Anthropic, with its $965 billion valuation and annualized revenue run rate around $47 billion (losses and expenses remain distinctly unknown).
That said, I had a strange, underwhelmed reaction to these numbers. First, that’s perhaps partly because these are leaked and I’m paranoid: If I haven’t seen something with my own eyes—no matter how much I might respect others’ reporting—my first inclination is generally to reserve judgment. And in this case, an OpenAI IPO may very well be imminent and we will ultimately see the final versions of these financials in the coming months.
There’s still a lot of mystery here, because these numbers pose lots of questions about OpenAI’s public market prospects and future: What story exactly does the company hope to tell retail investors about the sustainability of its business? Is the plan to ride the hype? What don’t we even know to ask? My suspicion is that there are many more unknowns here.
In the end, my odd ennui looking at these figures could be chalked up to: I don’t think these numbers tell us anything we didn’t already know to be directionally true. OpenAI is a legendary cash furnace, funneling billions as they chase the dominance that first made them the signature company of the AI boom.
In short, OpenAI is spending wildly to try to win the game it created. The big thing we don’t know? Whether that will be a winning strategy.
SpaceX (officially) is buying Cursor… SpaceX has officially exercised its right to buy Cursor for $60 billion. It will be the largest acquisition of a venture-backed startup ever (assuming we don’t count the frankly strange xAI-SpaceX merger). Check out my story from our last magazine issue about Cursor’s rise, the “Cursor is dead” discourse, and the company’s CEO, Michael Truell.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle X: @agarfinks Email: [email protected]
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