OpenAI's Operational Loss Reaches $10.9 Billion, WSJ Reports

OpenAI closed the third quarter with revenue of approximately $10 billion, an increase of about 50% over the previous quarter, and an operational loss of $10.9 billion, up from $10.1 billion recorded between April and June. These figures were published on Tuesday (10) by the Wall Street Journal, based on documents presented to investors and reported by Reuters. OpenAI did not comment on the figures when Reuters published the news.

The company does not disclose financial statements, and the information circulating are internal, unaudited numbers. Nonetheless, the series published quarter by quarter allows us to see the trend: revenue is growing at a rate of 50% per quarter, and the loss in dollars is increasing alongside it. The coverage of the quarter indicates the cost of computational infrastructure as the primary burden on the accounts.

Margin Improves, Deficit Grows

The metric that OpenAI highlighted for investors was the adjusted operational margin, which stood at negative 109% for the quarter, an improvement over the previous period. In practice, the company spent $2.09 for every dollar it earned. The optimistic interpretation is that the trend points in the right direction: if revenue continues to rise by 50% per quarter and costs grow less, the margin could cross zero at some point.

The pessimistic view focuses on the bottom line. The quarterly loss increased by $800 million in three months, and a quarter with a $10.9 billion deficit annualized amounts to over $40 billion. The percentage improvement comes from the denominator, not from a decrease in absolute spending. Both interpretations are true at the same time, and choosing one while ignoring the other amounts to speculation, not analysis.

Market Comparisons

The disclosure coincided with Anthropic, OpenAI's main competitor in the corporate market, updating its IPO filing with a price range of $70 to $78 per share. Reports published on Tuesday indicated that Anthropic incurred an operational loss of $567 million in the same quarter, about one-twentieth of OpenAI's loss.

However, the direct comparison has limitations. Both companies have different revenue mixes: OpenAI has a massive base of ChatGPT users, many of whom are free, where the inference cost does not generate proportional revenue, while Anthropic generates more revenue from corporate contracts and API usage. The two companies also account for computing commitments in a way that only an audited balance sheet would allow for accurate comparisons. Anthropic's IPO will produce such a balance sheet; OpenAI, for now, has no obligation to do the same.

Who Benefits from the Loss

OpenAI's loss is revenue for someone. CoreWeave, which reported results on the same Tuesday, has contracts with OpenAI that totaled $22.4 billion in three agreements closed throughout 2025, according to announcements from the provider itself. CoreWeave reported revenue of about $3.66 billion for the quarter, an increase of 168% year-on-year, and a contracted portfolio of $132.5 billion. The AI infrastructure supply chain relies significantly on the capability of labs that are still unprofitable to continue attracting capital.

This is the point of interest for technology buyers, not just for those investing in it. In the United States, corporate buyers negotiate pricing with suppliers who lose money on every dollar they earn. In India, large integrators that resell and implement AI models for global clients build multi-year offers based on API prices that, at this rate of loss, lack guarantees of stability. In Brazil, companies contracting AI models in dollars face the same risk, exacerbated by currency fluctuations on multi-year contracts. The common thread among the three markets is dependence on a price currently sustained by investor capital.

None of this indicates that OpenAI will raise prices tomorrow; the company has access to capital on a scale rare for a private firm. But a CIO signing a three-year contract with a model supplier should question what part of the current price is cost and what part is subsidy, and how much of that will survive the next funding round.