OpenAI spent $34bn in 2025, more than two and a half times what it took in, as it prepares to file for one of the largest public listings ever attempted. The figure, reported by the Financial Times, lays out in stark terms what the race to build frontier AI now costs the company leading it.
The breakdown is roughly what one would expect from a firm trying to outspend everyone else into a lead. About $19bn went on research and development, the FT reported, and close to $6bn on sales and marketing, with the rest spread across the infrastructure and staffing that running models at scale demands. Against that, revenue came in at $13bn, ahead of the company’s own internal target of $10bn.
The gap between those two numbers is the entire story of OpenAI’s present moment. Revenue is growing fast and beating plan, and the company is still losing money on a scale that would be fatal for almost any business not sitting on this much committed capital. Beating a $10bn target is the kind of result a normal company celebrates. Spending $34bn to get there is the kind of result only an AI lab can absorb.
OpenAI has the capital because investors keep supplying it. The company closed a $122bn funding round at an $852bn valuation earlier this year, the largest private raise on record, backed by SoftBank, Nvidia, and more than two dozen others.
