The FT puts OpenAI's revenue $20bn below the widely cited $70bn figure

The gap is about which sales count. Anthropic reports a gross figure, which includes its models even when they sell through partners such as Amazon and Microsoft, each of whom keeps a percentage of the sale; OpenAI reports a net figure, which strips those partner sales out. ^[4] Subtract the reported shortfall from the $70bn headline and OpenAI's run-rate on the FT's number works out to roughly $50bn. ^[12] Bloomberg's reporting runs the other way, with OpenAI expecting to reach a net $70bn by the end of the year. ^[7]

Both figures can be true at once. A skeptic would call the episode a non-story, on the grounds that anyone reading a funding deck can tell a gross number from a net one, and Newcomer makes that point itself, writing that sophisticated investors should understand the discrepancy. ^[8] The harder reading is that the blur was useful to the people inside it. OpenAI, Anthropic and the media have all been complicit in the confusion, Newcomer argues. ^[9] Investors and customers came to treat the two companies as running roughly neck-and-neck. ^[14]

For a leader sizing the AI market off these revenue claims, the usable lesson is narrow. The figures are not fabricated. But a gross number and a net number measure different things, so comparing OpenAI with Anthropic means first checking which basis each number uses. ^[4]