Docs: audited financial figures show OpenAI spent $34B in 2025, up 172% YoY, including $19B on research and development and nearly $6B on sales and marketing
Today, I can exclusively report, based on audited financial documents viewed by this publication that have been independently verified …
Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed AtEd Zitron
Context & Ripple Effects
OpenAI’s earlier investor disclosures pointed to rapid revenue growth in the first half of 2025 alongside R&D-driven cash burn. The audited figures now put the full-year cost base at $34B, with $19B directed to R&D and nearly $6B to sales and marketing.
Subsequent coverage reports a $3.7B first-quarter burn against $5.7B in revenue, while cash and marketable securities rose above $73B. Together, the reports distinguish a large operating-cost commitment from the separately reported 2025 net loss, which included a major non-cash charge tied to OpenAI’s prior structure.
First-order effects
OpenAI’s audited 2025 accounts establish that research and development was its largest disclosed spending category, making continued technical development the central draw on its operating base.
Nearly $6B of sales and marketing spending shows that OpenAI was funding commercial distribution at substantial scale alongside model development, rather than treating go-to-market as a secondary expense.
Second-order effects
The combination of heavy R&D and sales spending raises the revenue and financing burden on OpenAI: commercial growth must support not only ongoing research costs but also a sizable customer-acquisition and distribution operation.
The reported first-quarter cash position gives OpenAI room to sustain that spending in the near term, but the burn figures make cash generation and access to capital more consequential measures than revenue growth alone.
Third-order effects
If this spending pattern persists, frontier-AI competition will increasingly favor firms able to finance both expensive development and global commercialization simultaneously, rather than firms that can fund only one of those functions.
The accounting treatment highlighted in related coverage also makes reported net losses an incomplete cross-company comparison; investors and customers may focus more on cash burn, liquidity, and the composition of operating spend.
The trend: Frontier AI is becoming a capital-intensive contest in which technical investment, commercial distribution, and balance-sheet capacity are increasingly intertwined.
it's here! OpenAI lost a lot of money in 2025 but we're going to leave trying to make sense of the numbers to FT, whose article on the same info www.ft.com/content/e15b... I would love to read but is paywalled [embedded post]
It's startling but not unprecedented in venture-backed businesses to have losses greater than revenues while getting started. But I've never seen a company whose R&D costs ALONE are greater than revenue. What's in that bucket??? — www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive- op...
This is remarkable. It's not hard to make a big business if you charge $10 and give customers back $30 for a long time. When OpenAI runs out of cash to give away, they'll have to charge three times as much. Few customers will pay x3 current costs. Growth will crater, and the …
Whoa... “The financial condition of OpenAI is deeply concerning. $38.53 billion in losses are astronomical, and far higher than most believed it would be.... Losses also appear to be mounting yr-over-yr...and I'm not sure how this company finds a way toward any kind of sustaina…
Exclusive: I have seen OpenAI's audited financials for 2024 and 2025. — In 2025, OpenAI had $13.07 billion in revenue and $34 billion in costs. $867 million of its revenue came from SoftBank, and $303 million came from Microsoft. — www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive- op...
My turn to chime in for “the other lab”: these numbers are basically in line with what I'd expect, and calling this a scandal shows that Ed doesn't understand how exponentials work.
Hold on a second, does this mean OpenAI lost DOUBLE the money than what Sam Altman publicly claimed in 2025!? If this isn't securities fraud at this point let's just scrap that law 🤷🏻♂️
Exclusive: I have seen OpenAI's audited financials for 2024 and 2025. In 2025, OpenAI had $13.07 billion in revenue and $34 billion in costs. $867 million of its revenue came from SoftBank, and $303 million came from Microsoft. https://www.wheresyoured.at/ ...
Note the massive difference between how Zitron and the FT (who he shared the figures with) are reporting on this. I'll leave it to you to decide who to trust... [image]
Here's a fun piece from Ed Zitron in late 2024 talking about how implausible OAI's revenue estimates for '25 were (they beat them by over $1bn) and how margins will come down due to reasoning models (his numbers show gross margins improving). [image]