OpenAI posted a deeply negative adjusted operating margin in the first quarter of 2026, according to a report from The Information. Even after stripping out large expenses like stock-based compensation, the company lost $1.22 for every dollar of revenue it brought in. That equals an adjusted operating margin of minus 122 percent.
Total revenue for the quarter came in at roughly $5.7 billion. That figure is about a billion dollars more than what rival Anthropic reported in the same period. OpenAI's growth was fueled by its Codex coding agent, enterprise sales deals, and early advertising tests inside ChatGPT.
Despite the revenue gains, ChatGPT fell short of its goal of reaching one billion weekly active users. The chatbot averaged 905 million weekly users during the quarter.
Anthropic Gains Ground
Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees, is rapidly closing the revenue gap. The Information reports that Anthropic's annualized revenue now sits at nearly $45 billion. That compares to OpenAI's annualized revenue of roughly $30 billion. Anthropic expects to generate close to $11 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2026, along with an operating profit of nearly $600 million.
Both companies are considering initial public offerings that could begin in the fourth quarter of 2026. The potential IPOs would mark a major milestone for the generative AI industry and provide public market investors with direct exposure to two of the sector's leading players.
Background on OpenAI and Anthropic
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization and later restructured into a capped-profit model. It is best known for developing ChatGPT, which popularized conversational AI, and the GPT series of large language models. The company also offers enterprise products including the Codex coding assistant and various API services.
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Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei, along with several other former OpenAI researchers. The company builds its own large language models, including the Claude series, and focuses on safety and interpretability. It has attracted significant investment and recently launched its own enterprise offerings.
Despite high revenue figures, both companies face heavy costs related to computing infrastructure, research, and talent acquisition. OpenAI's latest quarterly results highlight the persistent challenge of turning AI innovation into sustainable profitability.
Financial Outlook
OpenAI's $5.7 billion in quarterly revenue represents strong top-line growth, but the steep negative margin underscores the capital-intensive nature of the business. The company has previously reported that training and operating advanced AI models requires billions of dollars in computing resources.
The Information's report did not specify whether OpenAI's losses are expected to narrow in the coming quarters. Both companies are widely expected to continue raising capital as they expand their product lines and push toward potential IPOs.
ChatGPT's user numbers remain impressive but have not yet hit the company's internal target of one billion weekly active users. OpenAI has been testing advertising within ChatGPT as one potential revenue stream, alongside its subscription offerings and enterprise deals.
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