FT: OpenAI's $70B ARR is investor-grossed; accounting choices hide billions in gap

rohanpaul_ai · x · 2026-10-10

FT analysis: yesterday's market fallout—Oracle and Nvidia tumbling, Nasdaq 100 down 1.4%—shows how influential still-private OpenAI and Anthropic have become.

Revenue accounting is the crux:

OpenAI books revenue net of what partners like Microsoft keep; Anthropic books gross sales through cloud partners.
The widely cited $70B OpenAI ARR never came from the company—investors grossed it up to match Anthropic's method. Both approaches are GAAP-compliant, so the same business can report run rates billions apart.
EY audits Anthropic; Deloitte audits OpenAI.

The ecosystem is deeply leveraged to OpenAI:

Oracle is borrowing to build capacity for a $300B, 5-year OpenAI deal worth 47% of its $638B backlog; S&P flags OpenAI as a central credit risk.
Microsoft (27% owner) tied 45% of its $625B commercial backlog to OpenAI and booked a $7.58B recapitalization gain.
Amazon and Nvidia committed $50B and $30B to OpenAI's March round; AMD granted warrants for up to 160M shares vesting as 6GW deploys.

Much of that capital cycles back as chip and cloud orders, so softer OpenAI revenue hits suppliers' sales and stakes together. Until OpenAI goes public, its run rate is the main outside signal on whether those bills get paid.

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FT: OpenAI's $70B ARR is investor-grossed; accounting choices hide billions in gap

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