The New York Times/Redux
The two AI giants have gone from ambitious startups to revenue machines rivaling the biggest names in enterprise software in under a year.
Less than two years ago, Anthropic and OpenAI were burning through cash faster than they could raise it. Now their combined annual recurring revenue reportedly exceeds $115 billion, a figure that puts them in the same conversation as Microsoft’s roughly $150 billion annualized run rate in its Productivity and Business Processes segment.
To put that in perspective, their combined revenue run rate now surpasses the trailing-12-month revenue of SAP, Salesforce, and Adobe combined.
The numbers behind the surge #
Anthropic has been the more dramatic growth story of the two. The company’s ARR climbed from approximately $9 billion at the close of 2025 to $47 billion by mid-May 2026, according to data from TickerTrends and analyses from ARK Invest. By the end of July, estimates place Anthropic’s run rate somewhere between $65 billion and $75 billion.
OpenAI’s ARR moved from an estimated $20 to $25 billion at the end of 2025 to around $40 to $41 billion by July 2026. Internal reports suggest the company hit monthly growth rates exceeding 20% in July alone.
Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H funding round in May 2026, landing at a post-money valuation of $965 billion. OpenAI raised $122 billion at an $852 billion post-money valuation earlier in the year. Both companies are widely expected to be preparing for potential IPOs.
What’s driving the growth #
Enterprise adoption of AI tools has shifted from experimental to essential, with companies signing multi-year contracts and embedding AI into their workflows. Coding and productivity tools have emerged as key applications, with both Anthropic and OpenAI leaning into agentic products that handle complex software development tasks. API demand continues to climb as developers build on top of these foundation models.
The fine print matters #
The distinction between gross and net revenue is particularly relevant here. Both companies distribute their products through cloud partners like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Revenue-sharing arrangements with those distribution partners mean that the top-line ARR figures may overstate what actually flows to Anthropic and OpenAI’s bottom lines.
At their current valuations, Anthropic and OpenAI would rank among the most valuable public companies on Earth if they listed today. Investors watching this space should pay less attention to the headline ARR and more attention to margins, retention rates, and the durability of enterprise contracts when those S-1 filings eventually land.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our