OpenAI spent $34bn in 2025, more than two and a half times what it took in, as it prepares to file for one of the largest public listings ever attempted. The figure, reported by the Financial Times, lays out in stark terms what the race to build frontier AI now costs the company leading it.
The breakdown is roughly what one would expect from a firm trying to outspend everyone else into a lead. About $19bn went on research and development, the FT reported, and close to $6bn on sales and marketing, with the rest spread across the infrastructure and staffing that running models at scale demands. Against that, revenue came in at $13bn, ahead of the company’s own internal target of $10bn.
The gap between those two numbers is the entire story of OpenAI’s present moment. Revenue is growing fast and beating plan, and the company is still losing money on a scale that would be fatal for almost any business not sitting on this much committed capital. Beating a $10bn target is the kind of result a normal company celebrates. Spending $34bn to get there is the kind of result only an AI lab can absorb.
OpenAI has the capital because investors keep supplying it. The company closed a $122bn funding round at an $852bn valuation earlier this year, the largest private raise on record, backed by SoftBank, Nvidia, and more than two dozen others.
That valuation is itself under scrutiny from some of OpenAI’s own backers, one of whom told the FT that underwriting the round meant assuming an eventual public valuation north of $1.2tn.
Which is where the IPO comes in. OpenAI has filed confidentially with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and is preparing to go public, targeting a valuation of up to $1tn. A listing at that level would rank among the biggest in history. The spending figures now in circulation are, in effect, the first detailed look at what a prospective shareholder would be buying.
The harder number to read is the loss. Reporting on the leaked financials has put OpenAI’s 2025 net loss at around $39bn, widened by restructuring and other non-cash charges; stripped of those, the operating loss appears closer to $8bn.
The two figures tell different stories, and which one matters most will depend on how much of the larger number proves to be one-off rather than structural. OpenAI has not published audited accounts, and the company declined to comment on the leaked figures.
What is not in dispute is the trajectory of the spend. OpenAI has told investors it expects to commit roughly $600bn to AI infrastructure through 2030. The $34bn spent last year, on that horizon, is an early instalment.
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