OpenAI had $10.9 billion in operating losses in the third quarter on $10 billion of revenue, The Wall Street Journal reported on 10 November. That loss equals 109% of the quarter’s revenue, by our arithmetic.
Anthropic’s S-1/A, filed the same day, puts its operating loss for the three months to 30 September at $567 million on revenue of $16,956 million, or 3.3% of revenue by our arithmetic. OpenAI’s reported loss is 19.2 times Anthropic’s filed one.
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The key insight:OpenAI’s third-quarter operating loss was $10.9 billion on $10 billion of revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal, or 109% of revenue by our arithmetic. Anthropic filed an operating loss of $567 million on $16,956 million of revenue for the same quarter, or 3.3% by our arithmetic; OpenAI’s reported loss is 19.2 times Anthropic’s filed one.
The Journal’s technology desk wrote on X that “OpenAI revenue jumped 50% to $10 billion in the third quarter, but its $10.9 billion in operating losses highlight the challenge of catching Anthropic”. The article ran under the headline “OpenAI Continues to Suffer Heavy Losses as Revenue Rises to $10 Billion”.
The $10 billion revenue figure matches what The Information and Yahoo Finance reported earlier the same day, as we reported. OpenAI is private and does not file its results with the SEC.
Third-quarter 2026 operating loss as a share of revenue: OpenAI’s $10.9 billion loss on $10 billion of revenue as reported by The Wall Street Journal, and Anthropic’s $567 million loss on $16,956 million of revenue from its S-1/A. OpenAI does not file its results. Percentages are our arithmetic, and accounting may differ.
What Was Posted on X
She’s hyping 50% growth without mentioning OpenAI burned 24x more cash than Anthropic ($13.5B vs $567M) just to make $7 billion less revenue
An opinion post by @ns123abc at 06:10 UTC on 11 November says OpenAI burned 24x more cash than Anthropic, citing $13.5 billion against $567 million. We could not find a source for $13.5 billion as an OpenAI third-quarter 2026 figure: the Journal’s figure in this piece is a $10.9 billion adjusted operating loss, and $13.5 billion matches the net loss OpenAI reported for the first half of 2025, per Tech in Asia. Anthropic’s $567 million is a third-quarter operating loss from its filing, not cash burn, so the post compares unlike measures.
What Anthropic Filed
Anthropic’s filing says it “generated operating income of $1.0 billion for the three months ended June 30, 2026”, then “incurred an operating loss of $567 million for the three months ended September 30, 2026, primarily driven by $5.0 billion of compute under short-term commitments and $2.0 billion of non-cash charges related to our donation matching program”.
Those short-term compute contracts are the subject of our earlier piece. The filing adds that Anthropic expects “our operating results to continue to fluctuate from quarter to quarter”. After the offering and a private placement, Anthropic would hold about $212.7 billion in cash, we calculated from the filing.
The Numbers Side by Side
On the reported and filed figures, Anthropic’s third-quarter revenue was 1.7 times OpenAI’s, while OpenAI’s operating loss was 19.2 times Anthropic’s, by our arithmetic. OpenAI lost about $1.09 for each dollar of revenue; Anthropic lost about 3 cents.
Update (10 Nov, 23:46 GMT): the $10.9 billion is an adjusted measure. Techmeme’s summary of the Journal’s report reads: “Leaked documents: OpenAI’s adjusted operating margin improved from -150% to -109% from Q2 to Q3”. Wall St Engine, citing the Journal, puts the adjusted operating loss at about $10.9 billion in the third quarter against $10.1 billion in the second.
Our arithmetic: a $10.1 billion loss at a margin of -150% implies second-quarter revenue of about $6.7 billion, in line with the “about 6.7 billion” Yahoo Finance reported, which we cited earlier. On the Journal’s figures the loss grew by about $0.8 billion while revenue rose about 50%.
Anthropic’s $567 million is a GAAP operating loss from its SEC filing, so the comparison in this piece sets an adjusted figure against a GAAP one. We still have not read the Journal’s article or seen what the adjustments exclude.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the revenue race the two reported figures describe is also a cost race: Anthropic’s filed quarter shows a $567 million loss after $5.0 billion of short-term compute and $2.0 billion of non-cash donation charges, while the Journal puts OpenAI’s loss above its revenue. Because one figure is filed and the other reported, and the measures may differ, the size of the gap is not established.
The Wall Street Journal (@WSJTech), 10 Nov 2026
“OpenAI revenue jumped 50% to $10 billion in the third quarter, but its $10.9 billion in operating losses highlight the challenge of catching Anthropic”
Three Implications
FOR ANTHROPIC’S IPO BUYERS Anthropic’s filed third-quarter operating loss was $567 million, after operating income of $1.0 billion in the June quarter, its S-1/A says.
FOR OPENAI The Journal reported a $10.9 billion operating loss on $10 billion of revenue; OpenAI does not file its results.
FOR THE COMPARISON One side is reported and the other filed, and the Journal’s figure is an adjusted measure while Anthropic’s is GAAP (updated 10 November).
The framework says that as companies move to agentic workflows, “the line item that used to be a rounding error becomes the budget”.
As we read it, the labs’ own incomestatements show the same line from the supply side: compute drove Anthropic’s filed third-quarter loss, and the Journal reports OpenAI’s loss above its revenue. The framework predates these figures and does not discuss them.
What Is Not Established
We have not read the Journal’s article, which is paywalled; the $10.9 billion comes from its own post on X. The Journal describes it as an adjusted measure, per Techmeme’s summary (updated 10 November); we have not seen what the adjustments exclude. OpenAI’s figures are reported, not filed; Anthropic’s are from its S-1/A, unaudited for the quarter. The two companies may account for costs and cloud sales differently, so the comparison is not like for like.
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OpenAI’s third-quarter operating loss was $10.9 billion on $10 billion of revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal. Anthropic filed an operating loss of $567 million on $16,956 million for the same quarter. By our arithmetic, that is 109% of revenue against 3.3%.
A note on sourcing. OpenAI’s figures come from The Wall Street Journal’s own post on X and its headline; we did not read the article. Anthropic’s figures come from its S-1/A filed with the SEC on 10 November 2026. Percentages and ratios are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
