Financial documents

OpenAI's financial documents related to 2025, obtained exclusively by journalist Ed Zitron, show losses of $38.53 billion against revenues of $13.07 billion. The total costs for the year reached $34 billion, with an operating loss of $20.92 billion.

Microsoft as the Main Creditor and Liquidity Issues

The most significant expense item is the relationship with Microsoft: in 2025, OpenAI paid the partner $17.2 billion, receiving only $303 million in return. By the end of the year, debts to Microsoft persisted at $3.64 billion. SoftBank paid OpenAI $867 million during the year.

By the end of 2025, the company's total assets exceeded $50 billion, with nearly half in cash. The company does not expect positive cash flow before 2030. The conversion from a nonprofit structure to a for-profit one added a significant accounting burden: the revaluation of the fair value of the convertible interests and the liability associated with the warrants produced a loss of $41.55 billion, which adds to the operating losses.

IPO Risks, Cascading Effects, and Legal Investigations

In 2026, the spending pace did not ease: OpenAI is burning $3.7 billion per quarter. Researcher Gary Marcus devoted an analysis comparing OpenAI to WeWork, arguing that the company's valuation seems difficult to justify compared to its fundamentals, being more tied to narrative than substance. Marcus also warns of a possible cascading effect: difficulties in OpenAI's IPO could impact Nvidia, Oracle, and CoreWeave, the latter recently entering the Nasdaq-100 and significantly relying on OpenAI workloads for its revenues.

In terms of competition, Anthropic filed its IPO request confidentially on June 1, 2026, with a valuation of $965 billion, higher than the $852 billion estimate attributed to OpenAI.

Legally, the company faces a coordinated investigation by 42 U.S. state attorneys general and a lawsuit from the State of Florida focused on the lack of age verification systems and the management of minors.

The reports published by Zitron are the first audited accounts of OpenAI to circulate publicly at a time when the company is considering going public with a timeline for positive cash flows set for 2030.