❯ Anthropic books gross cloud sales while OpenAI books only its share, so their annualized revenue figures cannot be compared directly

One metric, two methodsAnthropic and OpenAI calculate annualized revenue differently, Bloomberg reported on October 9. For sales made through cloud partners such as Amazon, Anthropic counts the gross amount as its revenue, while OpenAI recognizes only its own share. The report said Anthropic’s annualized revenue reached $65 billion in July and OpenAI expects to reach or exceed $70 billion by the end of this year.

One dollar sold: one books a dollar, the other 20 centsTechTimes gave an example: when Microsoft Azure sells $1 of OpenAI model usage, OpenAI records only its roughly 20-cent share as revenue; in the same situation Anthropic records the full $1 and lists the cloud provider’s cut as a cost of sales. Annualized revenue itself is only a full-year figure extrapolated from recent pace.

Between $50 billion and $70 billionThis explains a set of numbers that recently confused investors. Citing a Financial Times report, the article said OpenAI’s annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, about $20 billion below the $70 billion figure that had circulated, and attributed the gap to different accounting and an investor calculation error. Neither company is public, so outsiders compare them using scattered disclosures, and when methods differ there is no definite answer to who has “more revenue.”

▮ SIGNALBoth companies are heading toward public listings, and prospectuses will put revenue methods on the table; the rankings now in circulation may be reshuffled.