On November 10, 2026, OpenAI shared its third-quarter numbers with investors: quarterly revenue of about $10 billion, up nearly 50% from the previous quarter and the first time a single quarter has crossed $10 billion — but the operating loss widened to $10.9 billion, up from $10.1 billion in the second quarter. The figures come from investor documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal; OpenAI has not commented publicly. Revenue and losses hitting records at the same time is the most honest portrait of the company right now.
Growth is being driven by two lines: API demand and enterprise business. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar told CNBC that enterprise revenue doubled from the previous quarter and now roughly matches consumer revenue, with annualized revenue of about $50 billion. Reports also put weekly active users at 1.2 billion and paying users at nearly 100 million, with about 22 million added in the third quarter. The adjusted operating margin improved from -150% in the second quarter to -109%, which means the unit economics are getting better — only the absolute loss keeps growing, because the more it earns, the faster the compute bill rises.
Put next to Anthropic's $17 billion
In the same quarter, Anthropic — now on its IPO roadshow — disclosed third-quarter revenue of about $17 billion and an operating loss of just $567 million. Anthropic's IPO Price Range Is Out: $70–78, With Google and Nvidia Each Buying $10 Billion Set side by side, the gap is not in the size of revenue but in how efficiently it is earned: Anthropic's loss is a fraction of OpenAI's. The comparison is not entirely fair, of course — Anthropic's revenue skews more toward APIs and enterprise, while OpenAI supports 1.2 billion weekly users on free and low-priced plans, a naturally heavier cost structure. Still, investors will make the comparison.
The loss is not the news. The speed is
What the market is really watching is a race between two curves: enterprise revenue doubling and margins improving says commercialization is accelerating; but a $10.9 billion quarterly loss says compute spending has not slowed down. According to a Bloomberg report on November 6, OpenAI's current funding round values the company at $1.25 trillion and could reach $20 billion in total. Whether that valuation holds does not depend on how much this quarter earned, but on whether enterprise growth can outrun the next compute bill. The next things to watch are the fourth quarter — can enterprise revenue double again? — and the final terms of the funding round.
