OpenAI's total expenditure last year reached $34 billion, with $19 billion allocated to research and development in preparation for a trillion-dollar IPO.

According to Datanalysis Beating monitoring, audited financial data shows that OpenAI's annual expenditure in 2025 reached $340 billion, with R&D expenses as high as $190 billion, and is actively accelerating preparations for its IPO.

The significant increase in annual total expenditure stems from heavy investments in building models, leasing data centers, and competing for top research talent. Costs related to sales, marketing, and administration amounted to nearly $60 billion.

On the revenue side, OpenAI recorded $130 billion in revenue in 2025. By the end of 2025, monthly revenue had reached $20 billion, marking a substantial increase from the quarterly $10 billion scale at the end of 2024.

The high level of investment also led to OpenAI's net loss, attributable to the organization, surging from $50 billion in 2024 to approximately $390 billion in 2025. However, the vast majority of the loss came from a non-cash accounting charge of about $300 billion. Due to its restructuring as a Public Benefit Corporation by the end of 2025, early investors' convertible equity was treated as debt before the restructuring and required a reassessment accounting as the valuation increased. Excluding accounting charges and non-cash expenses such as employee stock incentives and Microsoft Azure compute credits, the actual operating loss was $80 billion.

Faced with soaring R&D costs, CEO Sam Altman warned employees in 2025 to focus on optimizing the consumer-facing chatbot business. Several high-cost side projects, including the video generation tool Sora, were put on hold in a strategic contraction. With the financial restructuring, OpenAI secretly submitted its IPO application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in early June, and the listing process has entered the final countdown. Meanwhile, rival Anthropic also submitted an IPO application this month, raising $650 billion and reaching a valuation of $9 trillion, intensifying the direct competition between the two companies in the public market.