OpenAI spent $3.7 billion in Q1 2026, more than half its quarterly revenue

OpenAI spent $3.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026, more than half of its $5.7 billion in revenue for the same period. The data comes from documents the company gave to shareholders, which The Information reviewed.

Threefold growth in a year

Revenue and spending both tripled compared with the first quarter of 2025. That implies revenue of about $1.9 billion and spending of about $1.2 billion a year earlier. Growth at this pace is unusual even for tech leaders.

• Q1 2026 revenue: $5.7 billion, up 3x year over year
• Q1 2026 spending: $3.7 billion, up 3x year over year
• Operating loss: about $2 billion for the quarter
• Both figures tripling in sync means the gap between income and spending is not shrinking

For comparison, $5.7 billion in quarterly revenue is a level most public tech companies reach only years after going public. OpenAI is building one of the fastest-growing businesses in history, but it is burning cash at the same rate.

Where the spending goes

The biggest cost item is computing infrastructure. Training large language models and running them requires huge GPU clusters. The more users ChatGPT and the enterprise API have, the heavier the load on servers and the more each request costs.

At the same time, OpenAI is building its own data centers under the Stargate project with SoftBank and Microsoft. The announced infrastructure investment runs to hundreds of billions of dollars. Facing fierce competition from Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta* and Chinese labs, OpenAI cannot halt R&D without losing its market position.

Personnel costs add to the total: in recent quarters the company has hired aggressively in model safety, agentic systems and enterprise sales.

Investors provide a cushion

In early 2026, OpenAI closed a $40 billion funding round at a $300 billion valuation, the largest ever for a private tech company. That cushion lets it run an operating loss while betting that the market will mature to the margins it needs.

"Both figures tripled year over year, a symmetry that reflects the company's unusual position: OpenAI is growing faster than almost any business in history while burning cash at the same rate,"

The Information writes.

Management expects to turn the trend around by cutting the cost of queries (GPT-4o mini series models are already cheaper to run), growing high-margin enterprise contracts and monetizing agentic products, Operator and Deep Research.

What this means

OpenAI holds a rare position: it is simultaneously one of the fastest-growing and one of the most expensive businesses in tech history. The quarterly data shows this balance is holding for now, but only thanks to a constant inflow of investment. The race for AI leadership continues, and its cost will only rise.

*Meta has been designated an extremist organization and is banned in Russia.