Flagship newsletter icon
From Semafor Flagship
In your inbox, every weekday
Sign up

OpenAI sales growth slows, unnerving investors ahead of planned IPO

Aug 19, 2026, 10:07am EDT
PostEmailWhatsapp
 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
Anna Rose Layden/Reuters

OpenAI said quarter-on-quarter sales growth cooled to 18% while losses deepened, unnerving investors as the firm prepares for what is expected to be one of the biggest IPOs ever. Rival Anthropic’s annualized revenue, meanwhile, topped $65 billion — up more than sevenfold from the end of last year — and more than 50% above OpenAI’s, Bloomberg reported.

The figures show the firms’ diverging fortunes as they prepare to go public, though both are increasingly locked into a price war with Chinese competitors, some of which offer only marginally less advanced models at a significant discount. “The US labs have cut the middle and are defending the top,” an expert told the Financial Times.

AD