OpenAI informed its investors that revenue in the second quarter grew 18% from the first quarter, yet its losses also expanded further. This performance disappointed some shareholders who had hoped the startup would make more substantial progress in closing the gap with its rival Anthropic.
In the three months ending in June, OpenAI's revenue rose to $6.7 billion, up from $5.7 billion in the previous quarter. Simultaneously, its operating margin sank deeper into loss territory, pushing profitability further out of reach as the company anticipates a highly awaited initial public offering. During that same period, Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion, surpassing OpenAI's sales for the first time.
Anthropic also posted adjusted operating profit of roughly $559 million, translating to an operating margin of about 5%, with projections for GAAP-based earnings before interest and taxes exceeding $1 billion in the third quarter. It remains unclear which methodology Anthropic employed to calculate its adjusted profit. As a privately held company, Anthropic has previously excluded stock-based compensation from this metric in communications with investors.
The company's annualized revenue run-rate has climbed steeply, surging from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to more than $60 billion by July 2026. The primary engine behind this revenue growth is Claude Code, a coding tool that hit a $1 billion annualized run-rate within six months of launch and reached $2.5 billion by February 2026. Roughly 4% of all public code commits on GitHub globally are now attributed to this tool, a figure that doubled within a single month.
The contrasting second-quarter results between Anthropic and OpenAI signal that the generative AI industry is accelerating its shift from a pure scale-driven competition toward a new phase centered on commercial viability and return on investment considerations. Analysts note that the divergent fortunes of the two companies underscore how dramatically the competitive dynamics in the AI sector have transformed since the beginning of this year.
The slowdown in ChatGPT's growth, combined with the runaway success of Anthropic's Claude Code programming tool, has placed OpenAI on the defensive, compelling the company to pivot its business strategy and restructure its leadership team. Just one week ago, Denise Dresser, OpenAI's chief revenue officer who had been in the role for less than a year, announced her departure. Over the course of this year, OpenAI has also seen the exit of former chief operating officer Brad Lightcap and Figi Simo, who had been viewed as a potential successor to CEO Sam Altman.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is actively advancing its public listing efforts. In early June, the company announced it had confidentially filed for an IPO, though no specific timeline has been established and the process could take considerable time. According to Altman's earlier statements, the company may go public in 2027. Anthropic appears to be moving faster on this front, having also submitted confidential IPO documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June, entering a quiet period. Foreign media reports suggest Anthropic could list as early as October of this year.
Additionally, OpenAI has painted an aggressive growth trajectory for investors and signed massive compute capacity agreements, contingent on its ability to generate tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue within a short timeframe. The financial performance of Nvidia, Oracle, and other tech giants now hinges substantially on whether OpenAI can deliver on its commitments to them. On August 17, Nvidia announced a new partnership with OpenAI and energy developer SB Energy, with OpenAI having pledged approximately 12 gigawatts of Nvidia AI infrastructure by 2030, expandable to 16 gigawatts if projects are scaled up. This represents a total compute business opportunity of roughly $600 billion for Nvidia before the end of the decade.
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