OpenAI expects $70 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026, Bloomberg reports

OpenAI expects its annualized revenue, meaning annual revenue at the current run rate, to reach or exceed $70 billion by the end of 2026. Bloomberg reported this on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The company showed the forecast to investors during talks on a new funding round. According to the sources, most of the growth comes from the enterprise business.

What we know so far

Public details are scarce, and it is important not to read too much into them. Bloomberg relies on anonymous sources, and OpenAI itself has not officially confirmed the figure. What is known comes down to a few points:

• target: $70 billion or more in annualized revenue by the end of 2026;
• metric: run rate, meaning the current monthly or quarterly pace multiplied out to a year, not recognized revenue for 12 months;
• audience for the forecast: investors taking part in discussions of the new round;
• main driver: the enterprise segment, meaning sales to businesses;
• status: a company forecast, not an actual result.

In the TNW headline, a $50 billion target for September appears alongside the $70 billion figure. In the available excerpt that part is cut off, so it cannot be presented as a confirmed fact. If it holds, the run rate would need to grow by roughly another 40% before year-end.

Where the growth comes from

For scale: at the end of 2025, Sam Altman said OpenAI's annual revenue run rate had passed $20 billion. If the forecast comes true, the figure will grow about 3.5 times in a year. That is a very high pace for a company of this size, and it rests not on ChatGPT subscriptions but on sales to organizations: licenses for large teams, API access, and the integration of models into workflows.

Enterprise contracts work differently from consumer subscriptions. They are larger and last longer, and they expand as new departments within the same client come on board. But they also run into budgets, security reviews, and competition. OpenAI has plenty of rivals here, from Anthropic and Google to cloud providers that sell the same models bundled with infrastructure.

Why the figure matters now

In conversations with investors, a revenue forecast works as an argument for a valuation. OpenAI has enormous compute commitments: Altman has previously cited total plans of around $1.4 trillion over the coming years. Spending on that scale is justified only if revenue grows very fast. The higher the stated run rate, the easier it is to explain why the company needs new capital and why investors should provide it.

The report does not disclose the terms of the round, its size, or the valuation, so it is too early to judge how far investors believed the forecast.

How to read this number

For decision-makers, the news carries several practical takeaways.

• Run rate cannot be compared with reported revenue. It may include peak months and future contracts that have not yet been paid, so the full-year total often comes out lower.
• Buyers of enterprise subscriptions should expect more aggressive sales tactics and bundled offers: to grow this fast, OpenAI will have to take budgets away from competitors.
• Developers and teams that depend on the API would do well to keep a plan B. A company growing more than threefold in a year regularly changes pricing, limits, and priorities.
• Investors and analysts are better off waiting for confirmed data on the round. Until then, $70 billion remains a pitch, not a result.

The key question for the coming months is simple: will quarterly figures confirm the trajectory for which the company is prepared to ask for billions more?