Journalist Ed Zitron, citing audited financial documents, reported that in 2025 OpenAI lost about $38.5 billion. According to him, these reports were independently verified by the Financial Times.

Zitron stressed that he would not comment much on the data, since the figures speak for themselves. For comparison, he cited the figures for 2024, when the company's loss was nearly eight times smaller.

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What the figures for 2024 and 2025 show

In 2024, OpenAI's revenue was $3.7 billion, while total costs were $12.48 billion. Operating losses reached $8.78 billion, and accounting for interest income and expenses, the net deficit grew to $8.84 billion. The company then wrote off $3.74 billion for non-controlling interests. As a result, OpenAI's total loss was $5.09 billion.

In 2025, revenue grew to $13.07 billion, but costs jumped to $34 billion, and the operating loss — to $20.92 billion. By cost structure, the bulk went to research and development — $19.18 billion, another $7.5 billion was the cost of revenue, and $5.73 billion — sales and marketing.

Zitron noted that 2025 was the year of OpenAI's transition from a non-profit organization to a commercial one. This led to a loss of $41.55 billion due to changes in the fair value of convertible instruments and warrants. Taking this into account, the net loss reached $60.35 billion, but the company reduced it to $38.53 billion by excluding $17.87 billion and another $3.95 billion through stakes tied to non-controlling interests.

How much OpenAI paid Microsoft

According to Zitron, by the end of the year OpenAI's assets exceeded $50 billion, and nearly half of that sum was in cash. In 2025, SoftBank paid OpenAI $867 million, and Microsoft — $303 million.

Source: BeInCrypto