OpenAI generated $6.7 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2026, up from $5.7 billion in the first quarter, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal. For a company that brought in roughly $3.7 billion across all of 2024, that quarterly figure alone says something about how fast this market is moving.
CFO Sarah Friar added a notable data point: by July 2026, the company’s annualized recurring revenue had already exceeded the entire Q2 total, suggesting the momentum carried straight into the third quarter.
The numbers in context
To put the trajectory in perspective, OpenAI’s full-year 2025 revenue came in at $13.07 billion. The company is now on pace to clear that annual figure in roughly two quarters.
Consumer subscriptions, driven primarily by ChatGPT’s paid tiers, account for around 70% of revenue. Enterprise adoption has grown to represent over 40% of the mix as of mid-2026, with GPT-5.6 series models and ChatGPT’s business-facing products cited as the core growth drivers.
The cost side of the ledger is less comfortable reading. OpenAI burned through $3.7 billion in cash during Q1 2026 alone, a figure that represented more than half of that quarter’s revenue. The company has made long-term computing commitments running into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Anthropic problem
Anthropic, the AI safety company backed by Amazon and Google, reportedly posted preliminary Q2 2026 revenue exceeding $11.5 billion, a figure that dwarfs OpenAI’s result for the same period.
The competitive pressure also shapes how investors should read OpenAI’s IPO preparations. The company raised capital at a valuation surpassing $852 billion in March 2026, pulling in more than $122 billion in that funding round.
What the IPO picture looks like
If monthly revenue is already running ahead of a $6.7 billion quarterly pace, the full-year 2026 number could land well above the $13 billion the company posted in 2025.
Consumer subscription revenue provides a relatively predictable base, but enterprise contracts are where margin typically improves over time as models get cheaper to run. The shift in revenue mix toward enterprise is a signal the company is aware of that dynamic and is pushing in the right direction.