For years, investors evaluated technology companies using familiar metrics: revenue growth, profit margins, and cash flow. Artificial intelligence is rewriting those rules.
Freshly leaked OpenAI financials show the company generated roughly $13 billion in revenue during 2025 while reporting a staggering $39 billion loss ahead of its planned IPO. Yet rather than scaring investors away, the disclosure may be reinforcing a growing belief across Wall Street: profitability no longer matters as much as winning the AI race.
The numbers arrive at a remarkable moment for the industry.
Anthropic has already confidentially filed for its IPO at a valuation approaching $965 billion, potentially becoming the first AI company to reach public markets at nearly $1 trillion. OpenAI is expected to follow with its own IPO filing later this year, reportedly targeting a similar valuation.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has made perhaps the boldest move of all.
Just days after completing the largest IPO in history, the company announced a $60 billion acquisition of Anysphere, the creator of AI coding platform Cursor, in a deal designed to strengthen its position against both OpenAI and Anthropic.
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The Cost of Competing in AI
The leaked OpenAI figures reveal the extraordinary economics behind modern AI development.
Although OpenAI generated approximately $13 billion in revenue during 2025, massive investments in compute infrastructure, model training, data centers, talent acquisition, and corporate restructuring pushed losses to roughly $39 billion.
Much of the headline loss stems from accounting adjustments tied to OpenAI's transition into a public-benefit corporation, though operating losses remain substantial.
Traditional investors might view those numbers as alarming. AI investors increasingly view them as the cost of admission.
Building frontier models now requires tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure spending, access to advanced chips, and long-term commitments to data center capacity. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI are collectively spending at a pace rarely seen in corporate history.
