OpenAI's R&D Bill Alone Exceeded Its $13B Revenue in 2025 — Audited Financials Published
OpenAI’s audited 2025 financial statements, obtained by independent journalist Ed Zitron and separately verified by the Financial Times, put specific numbers on the company’s cash burn for the first time. The headline: research and development spending of $19.18 billion last year exceeded total company revenue of $13.07 billion by $6 billion. R&D alone is enough to wipe out revenues entirely before the company serves a single customer.
The Numbers
| Line Item | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $3.7B | $13.07B |
| R&D expense | $7.81B | $19.18B |
| Cost of revenue | $2.65B | $7.5B |
| Sales & marketing | $1.11B | $5.73B |
| Operating loss | $8.78B | $20.92B |
| Operating loss % of revenue | 237% | 160% |
The R&D figure includes $10.59 billion paid to Microsoft in 2025 alone, reflecting the terms of their compute partnership — a number that puts OpenAI’s relationship with its biggest investor into clearer financial relief.
Monthly revenues grew to nearly $2 billion by the end of 2025, suggesting a significant ramp in the back half of the year. If that rate held into 2026, annualised revenues would approach $24 billion — though expenses have shown no sign of decelerating proportionally.
The IPO Backdrop
The financials surfaced as OpenAI filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, targeting a Nasdaq listing later this year. The company has told investors it expects to reach profitability by 2030 — four years out. At the 2025 trajectory, that requires either a dramatic acceleration in revenue growth, a significant compression of costs, or both simultaneously.
The operating loss ratio improved year over year from 237% to 160% of revenue. That is genuine progress on the unit economics, but it assumes the revenue growth rate continues to compound while expenses plateau. The 2025 data gives no evidence of a plateau.
Cost of revenue — the compute and infrastructure required to actually serve queries — grew from $2.65 billion to $7.5 billion as ChatGPT usage scaled. Sales and marketing more than quintupled, from $1.11 billion to $5.73 billion, suggesting the company is spending heavily to acquire and retain users in an increasingly competitive market.
What the Microsoft Line Means
The $10.59 billion R&D payment to Microsoft is the largest single line item in the entire expense structure. It likely reflects Azure compute consumed for model training and covers costs OpenAI books as research expenditure under its partnership terms. It also means that a significant fraction of OpenAI’s operating loss flows directly back to its largest investor — an arrangement that will face scrutiny from public-market investors when the S-1 goes live.
OpenAI declined to comment on the leaked statements.