OpenAI falls further behind Anthropic, with disappointing revenue growth and mounting losses

OpenAI Group PBC is falling further behind its rival Anthropic PBC, if its latest financials are any indication.

The artificial intelligence model maker told investors that its revenue rose 18% on a sequential basis, from the first to the second quarter, but it also grew its net loss. The numbers are likely to be hugely disappointing for investors in the company, who have been hoping it would be able to show it’s catching up with Anthropic.

OpenAI said it generated $6.7 billion in sales in the three month period ending in June, up from $5.7 billion in the first quarter, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. However, its operating margin dropped further into the red, which will likely deepen concerns that many have about the company’s ability to ever generate a profit.

The numbers, which come from undisclosed sources who are familiar with the company’s finances, are a big deal because they come ahead of a hotly anticipated initial public offering, which many believe could take place later this year, the Journal reported. The report came just one day after Anthropic revealed that its revenue had jumped by more than 50% on a sequential basis, to $11.6 billion in the second quarter. It also recorded a small operating profit for the first time.

Though OpenAI and Anthropic are widely perceived to be the AI industry’s market leaders, the way their fortunes have diverged is quite astonishing. Last year, many considered OpenAI to be ahead of its rival thanks to its first-mover advantage and the stellar growth and brand recognition of ChatGPT, but this year the picture has changed dramatically.

ChatGPT’s growth has stalled, while Anthropic has enjoyed huge success with its hit coding tool Claude Code, especially with enterprise customers. OpenAI has suddenly found itself on its back foot, and it has responded by letting go of a number of senior executives amid a pivot to AI agents that can automate business work.

In the latest high-profile departure, OpenAI parted with its Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser, who had been with the company for less than a year. She was just the latest in a string of names to leave the company, following former Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap and Fidji Simo, who was previously seen as a potential heir to Chief Executive Sam Altman but encountered health issues.

Normally, if a startup can generate more than $6 billion in quarterly revenue, it would be viewed as an incredible feat, but OpenAI is not any normal startup. The company has raked in around $180 billion in funding to fuel the AI boom, and that money has been spent lavishly on building AI data centers and massive contracts with cloud computing providers.

However, those deals, which have helped to drive surging stock prices across the technology industry, are premised on OpenAI’s ability to pay its bills. To do that, it needs to generate hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue. If OpenAI fails to meet these growth targets and can’t meet its contractual obligations, the share prices of companies like Nvidia Corp., Oracle Corp. and other tech giants could nosedive.

Today’s report doesn’t look good. OpenAI’s sequential growth rate was slower than that of other companies riding the wave of the AI boom, such as CoreWeave Inc., Micron Technology Inc. and also the software firm Palantir Technologies Inc.

According to the Journal, OpenAI told investors privately that its growth rate has accelerated since the launch of a new generation of models in July, but it did not provide any numbers to back up that claim. The company has also recently released a new “super app” that integrates ChatGPT with its coding tool Codex and an AI-native web browser, and it says the product is growing fast, attracting many new users. Meanwhile, President Greg Brockman, who is one of just three of its original co-founders still involved with the company, has become more involved with product and business development in an attempt to ignite new growth.

But Brockman and Altman have a lot of work to do, for the company’s operating loss climbed to $12.3 billion in the second quarter, up from $9.3 billion in the first. That means its losses are expanding faster than its revenue is. To make matters worse, Anthropic reportedly managed to deliver an operating profit of $559 million over the same period. The company said it has managed to do this by making more efficient use of its computing resources.

However, it’s important to note that Anthropic is a private company and isn’t forced to disclose its financial figures. As such, it did not reveal what methods were used to calculate its operating profit.

One of the reasons why OpenAI is so unprofitable is that it subsidizes hundreds of millions of users globally who don’t pay a subscription to use ChatGPT. It was also compelled to lower the prices of two of its newest models to make them more enticing for corporate customers who have grown more cautious about their AI spending. Many organizations have chosen to use more affordable open-source models, including Chinese systems, to save money on the cost of AI, posing yet another threat to OpenAI.

Photo: OpenAI