OpenAI's audited financial data for 2025 shows total spending of $34 billion, with R&D alone eating up $19 billion. The company is clearly gearing up for its much-anticipated IPO.
Where did all that money go? Building models, leasing data centers, and poaching top research talent. Sales, marketing, and admin costs accounted for nearly $6 billion.
On the revenue side, OpenAI brought in $13 billion in 2025. By the end of the year, monthly revenue had hit $2 billion — up from $1 billion per quarter at the end of 2024.
All that spending pushed net loss attributable to OpenAI from $5 billion in 2024 to roughly $39 billion in 2025. But the bulk of that loss — about $30 billion — is a non-cash accounting charge. Why? Because OpenAI converted to a Public Benefit Corporation at the end of 2025, which meant early investors' convertible interests were revalued as debt. Strip out that, plus employee stock compensation and Microsoft cloud credits, and the actual operating loss was just $8 billion.
CEO Sam Altman warned employees in 2025 that they needed to focus on optimizing the consumer chatbot business. Expensive side projects like the video generation tool Sora were shelved as part of a strategic pullback. With its financial house in order, OpenAI secretly filed an IPO with the SEC in early June. Meanwhile, rival Anthropic also filed this month, seeking to raise $65 billion at a $900 billion valuation — setting up a direct showdown in public markets.