The most anticipated IPO in technology history is taking shape, but the financial picture underneath the headlines is more complicated than the record numbers suggest. OpenAI hit $25 billion in annualized revenue in early 2026 and is preparing for a potential public listing later this year, while its main rival Anthropic is closing the gap at a pace that is reshaping the competitive calculus on Wall Street.
OpenAI hit $25 billion in annualized revenue in February 2026, up from $20 billion at the end of 2025. Weekly active users grew to 910 million, up from 800 million in October and 700 million in July, and paying business users surpassed 9 million as of February 2026, up from 5 million in August. Sacra
This growth rate - roughly 25 percent in two months - is extraordinary for a company of this scale. For comparison, Google took over a decade to reach similar revenue levels. Technerdo
The IPO Tension
CEO Sam Altman wants to list the company in Q4 2026, but CFO Sarah Friar has privately suggested delaying until 2027, cautioning that the company was not yet ready for public-company reporting standards. That tension has led to what observers are calling the most consequential internal debate in Silicon Valley right now. Tech Times
OpenAI has accumulated approximately $600 billion in future spending commitments for data centers and computing capacity. If revenue growth does not accelerate, those capital commitments could strain the company's finances at precisely the moment it is seeking to present a clean balance sheet to prospective public investors. Tech Times
The Anthropic Factor
Among U.S. businesses tracked by Ramp Economics Lab, Anthropic's share of combined OpenAI-plus-Anthropic enterprise spend went from roughly 10% at the start of 2025 to over 65% by February 2026. OpenAI's enterprise LLM API share has fallen from 50% in 2023 to 25% by mid-2025, while Anthropic rose from 12% to 32% over the same period. TECHi
Anthropic is reportedly seeking a valuation of $900 billion for its own upcoming IPO, which would surpass OpenAI's current $852 billion valuation. Tech Times
What the Numbers Actually Mean
For business leaders evaluating AI vendor relationships, the IPO race between OpenAI and Anthropic matters in a practical way. Both companies are about to face the reporting transparency and profitability pressure that comes with public markets. That pressure tends to accelerate pricing changes, product prioritization decisions, and enterprise contract terms.
The company generating $25 billion in revenue while burning through capital at a similar rate is not yet a sustainable business in the traditional sense. The IPO is partly a revenue event and partly a financial necessity. Watching how both companies perform against public market expectations over the next 12 months will tell business leaders more about the long-term stability of their AI vendor partnerships than any benchmark score.
