Anthropic's revenue "run rate" just beat OpenAI's by $25 billion. The two companies don't even count revenue the same way, so nobody actually knows the real gap.
One story: Anthropic won. The real story: two companies keeping score with different rulebooks, both headed to an IPO where investors will need to know which one.
"Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate surpassed $65 billion at the end of July 2026, overtaking OpenAI's reported $40 billion — framed in coverage as Anthropic surpassing OpenAI on revenue." [SOURCE ↗]
THE CLAIM. Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate hit $65 billion at the end of July, blowing past OpenAI's reported $40 billion, per Bloomberg reporting both companies fed to their own investors ahead of IPOs.
THE CHECK. TechCrunch runs the "surges past OpenAI" headline, then admits deep in the piece the companies "may calculate their revenue metrics differently." A revenue tracker that publishes its methodology says why: Anthropic books gross end-customer spend through cloud resellers as revenue, OpenAI reports closer to net. The same tracker puts OpenAI at $24-33 billion, not $40 billion, depending on which number you use.
THE TWIST. Neither company is public. Neither number is audited. Both are run rates, one month annualized, not a year actually earned. The businesses aren't even the same shape: about 85% of Anthropic's revenue is enterprise API contracts, about 85% of OpenAI's is consumer subscriptions. Comparing them head to head is a wholesaler's invoice total against a retailer's subscription count.
When two private companies race toward IPOs on run-rate headlines, ask what "revenue" means in each press release before repeating the leaderboard. Gross versus net can move the score without either side lying, and nobody outside these companies has actually recomputed either number on a matching basis.
When both companies file for their IPOs, the audited revenue comparison will not match today's run-rate headline in either direction. Mark this one for whenever the filings land.
Flips if either company discloses audited financials confirming the run-rate comparison held up like-for-like, or if a second independent source corroborates the gross-vs-net accounting gap beyond the single tracker cited here.
RECEIPTS (6) · CONFIDENCE MEDIUM · every URL below answered a live HTTP check before publish · sweep 2026-08-25
- ▲ techcrunch.com ⧉ · "Meanwhile, rival OpenAI has doubled its revenue to $40 billion, up from $20 billion at the end of 2025, Bloomberg reported last week."
- ● techcrunch.com ⧉ · "The two companies may calculate their revenue metrics differently, but Anthropic's growth rate has captivated investors far more than OpenAI's has."
- ▼ aibusiness.vc ⧉ · "Anthropic books total end-customer spend through cloud resellers as revenue and books partner payouts as expense."
- ▼ aibusiness.vc ⧉ · "That accounting difference means the top two aren't perfectly apples-to-apples."
- ● web.archive.org ⧉ · "Approximately 85% of Anthropic's revenue comes from enterprise and developer customers."
- ● web.archive.org ⧉ · "OpenAI's mix runs in the opposite direction, with roughly 85% tied to ChatGPT consumer subscriptions"