**OpenAI’s Rapid Financial Growth and Mounting Costs: A Deep Dive into Leaked Financials**
As OpenAI cements its place at the forefront of artificial intelligence, questions about its financial health and future sustainability are coming into sharper focus. Following a year marked by high-profile partnerships, aggressive dealmaking, and persistent speculation about a potential IPO, newly leaked documents offer a rare window into the company’s revenues, costs, and the complex relationship it maintains with key investor Microsoft.
### The Microsoft–OpenAI Revenue Exchange
At the heart of OpenAI’s financial engine is its multifaceted partnership with Microsoft. According to documents obtained by tech journalist Ed Zitron, Microsoft received nearly half a billion dollars in revenue share payments from OpenAI in 2024—specifically, $493.8 million. This figure surged to $865.8 million in the first three quarters of 2025, underscoring the rapid growth in OpenAI’s business.
The two companies share a unique revenue arrangement born from Microsoft’s substantial investment—over $13 billion—into OpenAI. The leaked documents suggest that OpenAI pays Microsoft about 20% of its revenue as part of this agreement, though neither company has publicly confirmed this exact percentage.
However, the financial relationship is not one-way. Microsoft also shares a portion of its own revenues with OpenAI. This includes revenues generated by Bing, which is powered by OpenAI’s technology, and by the Azure OpenAI Service, which provides businesses and developers with access to OpenAI’s AI models via Microsoft’s cloud. According to a source familiar with the matter, Microsoft returns about 20% of these revenues to OpenAI as well.
There is some complexity in how these numbers are reported. The leaked figures reportedly represent Microsoft’s net revenue share—meaning they reflect the amount Microsoft receives from OpenAI after deducting what it owes OpenAI from Bing and Azure OpenAI Service. Because Microsoft does not disclose exactly how much it earns from these services, the total flows of money between the two companies remain partially opaque.
### OpenAI’s Explosive Revenue Growth
Despite the lack of complete transparency, the leaked documents and industry reports help piece together a picture of OpenAI’s meteoric revenue growth. Using the 20% revenue share figure, it can be inferred that OpenAI’s revenue was at least $2.5 billion in 2024 and $4.33 billion in the first nine months of 2025. However, these are considered conservative estimates.
Other reports, such as those from The Information, have pegged OpenAI’s 2024 revenue closer to $4 billion, with the first half of 2025 alone bringing in $4.3 billion. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, has been bullish about the company’s trajectory, recently stating that annual revenue is “well more” than $13 billion and projecting an annualized run rate exceeding $20 billion by year’s end. He has even floated the possibility of