When the core financial metrics of the two AI industry giants cannot be compared on an apples-to-apples basis, investors are facing a fog of information.

OpenAI is expected to reach or exceed $70 billion in annualized revenue by the end of the year, while Anthropic announced in July that its annualized revenue had already hit $65 billion. However, according to an October 10 report, these two figures simply cannot be compared directly — the two companies use entirely different methodologies for the same metric.

Anthropic counts the full gross sales generated through cloud partners such as Amazon as revenue, while OpenAI only counts its net revenue share received from partners such as Microsoft. This means OpenAI's figure may appear significantly lower than Anthropic's on paper, but that does not mean its actual business scale is lagging behind.

This methodological discrepancy has already had a tangible impact on the market. Tech stocks fell on Thursday, partly because investors tried to adjust OpenAI's numbers into a format directly comparable with Anthropic's, arrived at lower estimates, and triggered market concerns about OpenAI's revenue growth rate.

It was previously reported that OpenAI's current annualized revenue is approximately $50 billion, below the $70 billion cited by some media outlets earlier, but the company expects to approach the latter figure by the end of the year. With neither company publicly disclosing standardized financial statements, annualized revenue has become the key metric for the market to judge whether the trillion-dollar AI boom can deliver — but it is also a severely flawed indicator.

Methodology Divergence: One Metric, Two Sets of Calculations

The root cause of why the two companies' revenue figures cannot be directly compared lies in a fundamental difference in how they recognize revenue.

Anthropic treats cloud platforms such as Amazon as distribution channels for its products, and therefore counts the full gross sales generated through these channels as revenue. OpenAI adopts the net method, only including the revenue share it actually receives from partners such as Microsoft.

According to reports, investors attempted to recalculate both companies' figures to achieve comparability, but ultimately concluded that the available information is insufficient to support an accurate conversion. Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at NYU Stern School of Business, said that as long as companies are consistent in their own methodology, using either net or gross revenue recognition is acceptable in principle — the key is providing maximum clarity to investors.

The Limits of ARR: A Non-Standardized "Growth Story"

Annualized revenue (ARR) itself is a highly elastic and easily distorted metric.

ARR, also known as annual revenue run rate, is calculated by extrapolating performance from a shorter period (such as a month or a quarter) to a full year, or by summing the contract value for the next 12 months. The report noted that companies have considerable discretion in determining this figure, and it is highly susceptible to distortion if future sales fail to materialize.

Damodaran likened this excessive focus on ARR to "looking at a kindergartner's report card," and said bluntly: "The fact that we focus on ARR at all already means we've gone off track."

More notably, there is a significant gap between annualized revenue and the company's actual recognized full-year revenue.

According to reports, people familiar with the matter revealed that OpenAI currently expects actual full-year revenue for 2026 to be approximately $35 billion — only half of its projected year-end annualized revenue. Anthropic has a similar gap: according to documents seen, the company's actual revenue for 2025 was approximately $4.6 billion, while its publicly announced annualized revenue at that time had already exceeded $9 billion.

Market Impact: The Black Box Effect Weighs on Investors

In the absence of standardized financial disclosure, the two companies' revenue figures have become a barometer for the entire AI investment narrative, and their uncertainty is transmitting to the broader market.

Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, said: "When a market participant this important is somewhat of a black box, investing becomes very difficult." He noted that any uncertainty about OpenAI's and Anthropic's business prospects "adds another layer to the doubts that have already been persistent and volatile in the market."

The report noted that as the tech stock rally pushes stock indices near record highs, any sign of slowing sales growth at these two companies could ripple through the broader market and upend expectations for chipmakers and other companies benefiting from the AI investment wave.

OpenAI and Anthropic are not the only AI companies emphasizing annualized revenue. In the current boom, a growing number of star startups are using this metric to showcase growth and support their lofty private-market valuations. Damodaran believes the debate over the technical details of annualized revenue is essentially avoiding a more fundamental question: how much real sales do these two companies need to generate to cover their massive expenditures and justify valuations exceeding $1 trillion?

The report also noted that as Anthropic prepares to enter Wall Street, this information asymmetry may be about to change.

Once both companies complete their IPOs, investors will gain access to financial statements prepared under generally accepted accounting principles. At that point, the reference value of the non-standardized annualized revenue metric will drop significantly, and the market's judgment of both companies' true financial condition will be built on a more solid foundation.