Multiple media reports this year have suggested that OpenAI has been struggling. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company missed internal revenue and user growth targets earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Other media outlets have also reported that OpenAI is not expected to turn a profit until at least 2030. The company also reportedly has $600 billion in data center commitments by 2030.<\/p>\n
Still, OpenAI\u2019s financials went from bad in 2024 to worse in 2025. They also come at a time when the company has confidentially filed for an initial public offering<\/a>.<\/p>\n Piling into R&D and sales and marketing<\/p>\n Here are the numbers that Zitron reported for OpenAI in 2024:<\/p>\n Revenue: $3.7 billionCost of Revenue: $2.65 billionResearch and Development (R&D): $7.81 billionSales and Marketing: $1.11 billionGeneral and Administrative: $907 MillionTotal Costs and Expenses: $12.48 billionLoss from Operations: $8.78 billion<\/p>\n Zitron also reported that the company had a net loss of $5.09 billion. OpenAI removed $3.74 billion of \u201cnet loss attributable to noncontrolling members capital.\u201d<\/p>\n ]]> Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n This also means OpenAI had a 28.4% gross margin, although I am using cost of revenue in the formula, which isn\u2019t always the same as cost of goods sold.<\/p>\n In 2025, the losses accelerated:<\/p>\n Revenue: $13.07 billionCost of Revenue: $7.5 billionResearch and Development: $19.18 billionSales and Marketing: $5.73 billionGeneral and Administrative: $1.57 BillionTotal Costs and Expenses: $34 billionLoss from Operations: $20.92 billion<\/p>\n As you can see, revenue did grow 253% year over year, while gross margin<\/a> expanded to nearly 43%. But R&D more than doubled, while sales and marketing also grew by fivefold.<\/p>\n The one big caveat that inflated losses, according to Zitron, is the fact OpenAI transitioned from a nonprofit to a for-profit company in 2025. This led to a $41.55 billion loss attributable to changes in the fair value of convertible interests and warrant liabilities.<\/p>\n This item essentially reflects the conversion of warrants and debt into equity. It\u2019s a non-cash event, and the number grows over time as a company\u2019s value increases. In 2025, OpenAI removed $17.87 billion due to a \u201cnet loss attributable to noncontrolling members capital.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, Zitron reported that in 2025, OpenAI<\/a> received an $867 million payment from SoftBank and $303 million from Microsoft.<\/p>\n OpenAI paid Microsoft over $10.5 billion in 2025 for R&D, which Zitron believes was likely for training its large language models.<\/p>\n What to make of all of this<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to fully understand everything without more context, especially when it comes to things like noncontrolling interests.<\/p>\n However, given that there were some one-time items affecting OpenAI\u2019s results, investors should focus on operating losses for now, which rose 138% in 2025 to nearly $21 billion.<\/p>\n The significant increase in sales and marketing spend is another concern, as it suggests OpenAI may be putting much more effort into acquiring users. We also know that earlier this year, Anthropic\u2019s Claude overtook ChatGPT in Apple\u2019s App Store, if only briefly.<\/p>\n Ultimately, investors will still need to review OpenAI\u2019s registration statement if it goes public, but these losses are not a good sign.<\/p>\n Anthropic is reportedly close to turning an operating profit in the current quarter, and even Space Exploration Technologies had a $2.6 billion operating loss in 2025.<\/p>\n While OpenAI has never struggled to raise funding, at a time when large AI companies are seemingly all trying to raise tens of billions in fresh capital, the company\u2019s financial profile could make its IPO a much harder sell than some of its peers.<\/p>\n Should you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies right now?<\/p>\n Before you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies, consider this:<\/p>\n The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks<\/a> for investors to buy now\u2026 and Space Exploration Technologies wasn\u2019t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.<\/p>\n Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you\u2019d have $424,531!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you\u2019d have $1,273,016!*<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s worth noting Stock Advisor\u2019s total average return is 940% \u2014 a market-crushing outperformance compared to 209% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.<\/p>\n See the 10 stocks \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n *Stock Advisor returns as of June 17, 2026. <\/p>\n Bram Berkowitz<\/a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Points OpenAI’s losses really accelerated in 2025. While some one-time items negatively impacted 2025 financials, operating losses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1320,1317,1316,1319,1318,1321,1324,835,157,1310],"class_list":["post-77156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-futures","tag-index-market-quote","tag-index-market-quotes","tag-index-market-symbol","tag-index-market-symbols","tag-indices","tag-intc","tag-intel-corp","tag-openai","tag-the-globe-and-mail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Person](\"https:\/\/barchart-news-media-prod.aws.barchart.com\/FC\/7d83a3b4ef77c52789e2aa308420e8c7\/%3Furl%3Dhttps%253a%252f%252fcdn.content.foolcdn.com%252fimages%252f1umn9qeh%252fproduction%252f00f32bdd05fc4054d2714a2629659239a2f27346-6455x3631.jpg%253fw%253d6455%2526h%253d3631%2526q%253d75%2526auto%253dformat%26amp%3Bw%3D700\")
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