OpenAI’s audited financials paint a picture that should make any prospective IPO investor reach for the antacids. The company’s net loss attributable to OpenAI hit $38.53 billion in 2025, according to audited documents obtained by the newsletter Where’s Your Ed At and independently verified by the Financial Times. That’s nearly eight times the $5.09 billion loss posted in 2024. These numbers surface as the company reportedly prepares to go public with the Stargate Project already underway.
Revenue Tripled. Costs Outran It Anyway.
Triple-digit revenue growth sounds like a success story until the expense column comes into view.
Revenue jumped from $3.7 billion to $13.07 billion — impressive by any standard. But total costs and expenses reached $34 billion, producing an operating loss of $20.92 billion. That’s more than double the prior year’s $8.78 billion operating shortfall. R&D alone consumed $19.18 billion. Sales and marketing quintupled to $5.73 billion.
The key 2025 figures at a glance:
- Revenue: $13.07 billion (up from $3.7 billion in 2024)
- R&D spending: $19.18 billion
- Sales and marketing: $5.73 billion (up from $1.11 billion)
- Operating loss: $20.92 billion
- Year-end assets: roughly $50 billion, nearly half held in cash
The Microsoft relationship tells its own story — and it’s not a flattering one. OpenAI paid Microsoft approximately $17.2 billion in 2025 across R&D, infrastructure, and other costs. Microsoft paid OpenAI $303 million in return. SoftBank contributed $867 million. As one analysis based on Microsoft’s SEC filings framed the unit economics: “The company now spends three dollars and thirty cents for every dollar it earns.”
The $41 Billion Ghost in the Numbers
A massive non-cash accounting charge inflates the headline loss, but the operating reality underneath is alarming enough on its own.
The total net loss across all interests was actually $60.35 billion. That eye-watering figure needs context. A $41.55 billion non-cash charge reflects fair-value adjustments on convertible interests and warrants tied to OpenAI’s conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit entity in 2025. It’s an accounting treatment, not cash out the door. After allocating portions to noncontrolling interests, the attributable loss lands at $38.53 billion. If you’re tracking the cash-relevant number, watch the $20.92 billion operating loss.
Looking ahead, a Deutsche Bank analysis projects $143 billion in cumulative negative free cash flow through 2029. OpenAI has reportedly scaled back long-term infrastructure commitments with Microsoft from $1.4 trillion to roughly $600 billion by 2030. As one analyst put it: “No startup in history has operated with losses on anything approaching this scale.”
You might hear comparisons to Amazon’s early years of deliberate, strategic losses. The difference? Amazon’s largest single-year net loss was $1.4 billion. OpenAI’s operating loss alone is fifteen times that — and a clear path to profitability remains somewhere over the horizon.
