Leaked financials show OpenAI spent far more than it earned in 2025

In short: Leaked audited documents suggest OpenAI’s revenue grew fast in 2025, but its spending grew even faster, leading to multi billion dollar losses.

What's going on

Newly leaked, audited financial statements reviewed by Ars Technica and obtained by journalist Ed Zitron show OpenAI’s revenue rising from $3.7 billion in 2024 to $13.07 billion in 2025. The Financial Times reported that monthly revenue reached nearly $2 billion by the end of 2025, which suggests sales were still accelerating.

But the documents also show OpenAI’s expenses were larger than its revenue, especially research and development. Research and development is the money spent to build and improve the technology, like paying for huge amounts of computing power and expert staff. That line item grew from $7.81 billion in 2024 to $19.18 billion in 2025, including $10.59 billion paid to Microsoft.

Other costs also jumped. “Cost of revenue,” meaning the direct cost to run the service, rose from $2.65 billion in 2024 to $7.5 billion in 2025. This includes the computing used when the system answers people’s questions (like paying the electric bill every time you turn on a very powerful machine). Sales and marketing costs increased from $1.11 billion to $5.73 billion.

What to watch

OpenAI’s operating loss, the loss from day to day business, grew from $8.78 billion in 2024 to $20.92 billion in 2025. The company has told investors it hopes to become profitable by 2030, but these numbers show it may need to cut costs, raise prices, or both. The leaked documents also show a much larger “net loss” in 2025, but reports say about $30 billion of that was a one time accounting charge.

Source: Arstechnica