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# OpenAI and Anthropic report revenue like box office and rentals. Hollywood never mixes the two.
- URL: https://www.dailyferment.com/openai-anthropic-revenue-gross-vs-net-box-office/
- Published: 2026-10-13T04:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-13T03:59:59.000Z
- Description: OpenAI says close to $50 billion, others said $70 billion, and Anthropic counts what customers pay through Amazon and Google. Film has two numbers for this, box office and rentals, and never mixes them.
- Author: Rana Bilal Zafar
- Tags: Working Out Loud, AI, Business, #reframe

On 8 October the Financial Times reported that OpenAI had told investors its annualised revenue was "close to US$50 billion as of the end of September", according to AFP's write-up. Reports a few weeks earlier had put it at $70 billion. A day later Bloomberg reported that OpenAI expects to reach or exceed $70 billion by the end of the year, and that Anthropic counts the gross amount of certain sales through cloud partners such as Amazon. Bloomberg's summary of the comparison, as AI Weekly quotes it: "not apples to apples." AI stocks fell on the FT story; AFP reported Oracle lost nearly 6%.

So there are at least three numbers in play, and people are lining them up as if they measure the same thing. What I want to work out is simple: which number answers which question?

## My first reaction was that Anthropic's number is inflated

That's OpenAI's line, as Reuters reported it on 29 September from Anthropic's IPO prospectus. Anthropic sold 47% of its 2025 revenue through the Amazon and Google cloud marketplaces, about $2.16 billion. It books the full value of those contracts as revenue and records the platforms' cut as a marketing cost, because it says it is the "principal" in the sale. Reuters worked out that the platforms took about $351 million, roughly 16 cents of each dollar. OpenAI, Reuters says, has told investors this approach inflates Anthropic's revenue "by billions of dollars".

Then I did the arithmetic. If 47% of revenue carries a 16% fee, stripping the fee out removes 0.47 × 0.16, about 7.5% of the total. On a $65 billion run rate, which is what Bloomberg reported for Anthropic at the end of July, that's roughly $5 billion. beri.net got to about the same number. It's real, but it's nowhere near the $20 billion gap between OpenAI's own two figures. And that 7.5% is based on last year's channel mix, which may not hold now.

The gross accounting isn't the main problem. Mixing the two methods is.

## The cross: the film business has two numbers and never confuses them

When a film opens, the trade press reports the box office gross: every ticket sold, at full price. That number goes on the chart, and every film on the chart is measured the same way. It tells you how much the audience spent.

![Bar chart: of $100 a customer pays, a US studio keeps about $50 of a cinema ticket, a studio keeps $25 in China, and Anthropic kept about $84 of a sale through a cloud marketplace in 2025, with about $16 going to the platform](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d7/b7/d7b77195-48c5-45ab-8688-51750879d1d6/content/images/2026/10/df44-split.png)

Gross is what the customer paid. Net is what the seller kept. Sources: Variety via Fox News, Jun 2014; Reuters, 29 Sep 2026.

The studio doesn't get that money. In the US, Variety reported in 2014, studios and theatre owners "essentially share box office receipts evenly". In China, studios "only receive 25 percent of ticket sales". So $100 million of box office is about $50 million to the studio at home and $25 million in China. That second number, rentals, is what studios account with.

Nobody in film thinks the box office gross is dishonest. It answers "how big is the audience?" Rentals answer "how much did the studio keep?" The convention works because everyone reports gross on the chart, and anyone who wants the economics knows the split depends on where the tickets were sold.

## What that suggests for AI revenue

Anthropic's figure is closer to box office: what customers paid for Claude, including what they paid through Amazon and Google. OpenAI's $50 billion is closer to rentals. The earlier, higher number, according to a person who spoke to CNBC and was quoted by AFP, counted gross revenue from partnerships such as one with Nvidia, and was meant to make comparison with Anthropic easier. So OpenAI already has a box office number. It just isn't the one it reports to investors now.

Hollywood's lesson is that you need both columns, labelled, for everyone. Gross tells you about demand for a model. Net tells you what the lab keeps to pay for compute. And like China against the US in film, the split depends on the channel: 84 cents to the dollar through a cloud marketplace for Anthropic in 2025, and something different again for any lab selling through a partner that takes a bigger share.

I wrote earlier about [Anthropic's prospectus showing two customers and two clouds carrying much of its revenue](https://www.dailyferment.com/anthropic-ipo-two-customers-revenue-concentration/). The channel split matters here for the same reason. A lab that sells half its product through someone else's store has a gap between gross and kept that its rival may not.

## Where the comparison breaks

Box office is a count of tickets at a public price. A run rate is one month's sales multiplied by twelve, which AFP noted is often criticised as imprecise. A film's split is set by contract per territory. A lab's split can change when it renegotiates a partner deal, and those terms aren't public.

There's also no Box Office Mojo for AI. In film, a third party collects the gross from theatres. In AI, every number comes from the company or from people briefed by it. Anthropic's IPO filings will give one audited set of figures. OpenAI's are still private.

## What I'm confident of, and what I'm not

The reported figures, and how Anthropic books marketplace sales, are established from Reuters, the FT as reported by AFP, and Bloomberg as reported by The Next Web and AI Weekly. The box office splits are established from Variety's 2014 report. The 7.5% adjustment is my arithmetic on Anthropic's 2025 channel mix, and the mix may have shifted. That AI labs will end up publishing two labelled numbers is a guess.

The claim, in one sentence: a gross number and a net number can both be honest, but a ranking only works when everyone reports the same one; film ranks by box office and accounts by rentals, and AI run rates need the same two columns before anyone compares them.

## Sources

Echo Wang and Krystal Hu, Reuters, "Anthropic IPO prospectus lays bare deep dependence on Big Tech partners", via The Star, 30 September 2026\. [https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/09/30/exclusive-anthropic-ipo-prospectus-lays-bare-deep-dependence-on-big-tech-partners](https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/09/30/exclusive-anthropic-ipo-prospectus-lays-bare-deep-dependence-on-big-tech-partners?ref=dailyferment.com)

AFP, report on OpenAI's revenue figures and the FT story, via Malay Mail, 9 October 2026\. [https://malaymail.com/news/money/2026/10/09/ai-hype-meets-revenue-reality-openai-figures-fall-us20b-short-of-earlier-reports/238332](https://malaymail.com/news/money/2026/10/09/ai-hype-meets-revenue-reality-openai-figures-fall-us20b-short-of-earlier-reports/238332?ref=dailyferment.com)

Cristian Dina, The Next Web, "OpenAI expects a $70bn revenue run rate by year-end, Bloomberg reports", 9 October 2026\. [https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-revenue-70bn-year-end-50bn-september](https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-revenue-70bn-year-end-50bn-september?ref=dailyferment.com)

AI Weekly, "Anthropic Books Gross Cloud Sales; OpenAI Only Its Net Share" (summary of Bloomberg), 10 October 2026\. [https://aiweekly.co/alerts/anthropic-books-gross-cloud-sales-openai-only-its-net-share](https://aiweekly.co/alerts/anthropic-books-gross-cloud-sales-openai-only-its-net-share?ref=dailyferment.com)

Variety, report on Hollywood's share of China box office, via Fox News, 5 June 2014\. [https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/china-box-office-hollywood-profits-less-than-earth-shaking](https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/china-box-office-hollywood-profits-less-than-earth-shaking?ref=dailyferment.com)

Rajesh Beri, "OpenAI Revenue Runs at $50B Once Partner Sales Come Out", beri.net, 11 October 2026\. [https://www.beri.net/article/openai-revenue-50-billion-not-70-billion-gross-vs-net-run-rate-vendor-viability-ipo-delay](https://www.beri.net/article/openai-revenue-50-billion-not-70-billion-gross-vs-net-run-rate-vendor-viability-ipo-delay?ref=dailyferment.com)