OpenAI Annual Revenue Tops $40 Billion, But IPO Window Remains Closed

TradingKey - On August 13 ET, according to Bloomberg, OpenAI's annualized revenue surpassed $40 billion, doubling from the end of 2025.

However, according to a previous report by The New York Times, OpenAI's IPO timeline has been delayed from the initially expected fall of this year to 2027. Despite fierce revenue growth, management leans toward delaying the listing, a discrepancy that warrants a closer look.

Where Is OpenAI Burning Its Cash?

The answer is compute power. According to audited documents verified by the Financial Times, total company expenditure in 2025 reached $34 billion, including approximately $19.2 billion in R&D spending, $5.7 billion in sales and marketing expenses, $7.5 billion in cost of revenue (mainly inference compute costs), and payments to Microsoft (MSFT) totaling $17.2 billion in various service fees.

In 2025, the net loss was $38.5 billion, but about $30 billion of this stemmed from a one-time accounting adjustment during structural transformation, involving no cash outflow. Excluding such non-cash items, the actual operating loss in 2025 was approximately $8 billion.

Moving into 2026, the rate of cash burn continues to accelerate. According to disclosures by The Information, OpenAI consumed $3.7 billion in cash in the first quarter of 2026, exceeding half of its $5.7 billion revenue for the same period. In court testimony, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman revealed that single-year compute expenditure in 2026 is expected to reach $50 billion, averaging over $130 million per day.

Why OpenAI Is Inclined to Delay Its IPO

CEO Sam Altman insists on a $1 trillion baseline valuation. The advisory team presented a straightforward choice: either wait until 2027 when the valuation target is met before going public, or lower the target to list earlier; he chose the former.

Shifting market conditions support this caution. SpaceX (SPCX) surged to $225 in its first week of listing, but steadily fell back below its issue price, with retail sentiment falling far short of expectations. Based on this, investment banking advisors stated bluntly that OpenAI's current offering window is far from ideal.

Based on a $1 trillion valuation, OpenAI's price-to-sales ratio is about 25x, Microsoft is about 12x, and Google (GOOGL) is about 6x. Anthropic's price-to-sales ratio is also around 20x, but Anthropic expects to achieve an operating profit in the second quarter of 2026, whereas OpenAI's operating loss margin reaches as high as 122% in the first quarter of 2026. The same multiple corresponds to a completely different risk-reward profile.

Anthropic could complete its IPO as early as this fall. Once listed first, it will establish the first public valuation benchmark for the AI sector. At that point, if OpenAI wants to command a higher valuation, it must be supported by financial performance that far outpaces its rivals. Based on its current cash burn rate of $50 billion a year, the difficulty of achieving this goal continues to rise.

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