Gift link: https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/f77156...
Apparently they overstated revenue in an attempt to try to provide a direct comparison with Anthropic's reported metrics.
From the article: "According to a person with knowledge of the matter, the discrepancy arose from attempts by OpenAI’s own investors to produce a direct comparison with Anthropic’s annualised revenues. The pair calculate the figure in different ways, with Anthropic including the revenue from sales via cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not. Efforts to “gross up” OpenAI’s annualised revenue led to reports that the group’s annualised revenue had hit $40bn in August. The company has since told investors its revenues have grown more than 70 per cent, leading to the $70bn figure"
**sorry the gift link can only be viewed 3 times..
> Apparently they overstated revenue in an attempt to try to provide a direct comparison with Anthropic's reported metrics.
Just to clarify from my understanding of the quote, "they" here is openai investors, not openai.
The people who are currently holding the bag but would maybe like not to be holding the bag decided it was worth more?
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>The pair calculate the figure in different ways, with Anthropic including the revenue from sales via cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not.
gift link didn't work for me, and is this poorly phrased? because it seems implausible that OpenAI doesn't typically include revenue from their models being used on AWS. Perhaps the "gross up" is referring to how the number is included? like Anthropic was using the value pre-removal of revenue sharing and putting the revenue share subtraction as a separate expense?
[not a finance guy so someone tell me I'm wrong if that's not a plausible reading]
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/03/anthropic-and-openais-reven...
Obviously not the same thing as lying, but Anthropic had also been juicing the revenues with making smart models incredibly verbose. In August my org 3x more in API credits vs July. In September the spend returned to July levels partially because they made models less verbose, but mostly because we've changed how we are using them.
> Apparently they overstated revenue in an attempt to try to provide a direct comparison with Anthropic's reported metrics.
I'm confident both companies are lying about their revenues.
By how much do you think they are lying?
Good news for you then my confident friend, as once Anthropic IPO you'll be able to become very rich putting your money where your mouth is.
You think betting against AI markets will make you rich, even if you're right?
Ah yes, my favorite hacker news retort: one is entitled to a prediction if and only if one is prepared to take a huge financial stake in that prediction.
This take has been trotted out so many times, e.g. “How many puts have you bought if you’re so certain?”
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a ponzi scheme can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent
The link doesn't work.
Ok, we've swapped the submitted URL (https://www.ft.com/content/b66a9858-f8fb-46cb-b506-44bfe26fc...) for a non-paywalled article above.
All that tells you is that they haven't at all abandoned the disinformation: Now they are blaming Anthropic for it and trying to shift attention to them.
You can still learn something from it: Look at what they do, not what they say - look at how sophisticated their public communication is. They deliver that information in the perfect manner - not only the redirection and striking a blow against their rival, but they use an anonymous "person with knowledge of the matter": A named source at OpenAI might betray the self-interest in the statement, but some anonymous third party is just reporting what they know.
These guys are very good at it, though that shouldn't surprise you. Look at their product, in one sense a highly effective disinformation machine.
They can afford, and need, the best bullshitters on the planet.
>Look at their product, in one sense a highly effective disinformation machine.
What do you mean by this?
there's a popular theory that AI hallucinates 100% of the time and the coping mechanism is to call it a bullshit machine