OpenAI’s $34B spend last year signals IPO preparation
▼ Summary
– OpenAI spent $34bn in 2025, more than double its $13bn revenue, and is preparing for a public listing that could value it up to $1tn.
– The largest spending categories were $19bn on research and development and $6bn on sales and marketing, with the remainder on infrastructure and staffing.
– OpenAI’s 2025 net loss is estimated at $39bn, though the operating loss, excluding restructuring and non-cash charges, is around $8bn.
– The company raised $122bn in private funding earlier this year at an $852bn valuation, backed by SoftBank, Nvidia, and others.
– OpenAI has told investors it expects to spend roughly $600bn on AI infrastructure through 2030.
OpenAI burned through $34 billion in 2025 , more than two and a half times its revenue , as the company gears up for what could become one of the largest initial public offerings in history. According to a Financial Times report, the staggering figure reveals the brutal economics of leading the frontier AI race.
The spending breakdown follows the predictable pattern of a company trying to out-invest every rival into submission. Roughly $19 billion went to research and development, the FT noted, while nearly $6 billion was allocated to sales and marketing. The remainder covered the massive infrastructure and staffing costs required to run advanced AI models at scale. On the other side of the ledger, revenue hit $13 billion, comfortably exceeding OpenAI’s internal target of $10 billion.
That gap between spending and income captures everything about OpenAI’s current position. Revenue is climbing fast and beating expectations, yet the company is hemorrhaging cash at a rate that would sink virtually any other business not sitting on a mountain of committed capital. Hitting a $10 billion revenue target is the kind of milestone a normal company would celebrate. Spending $34 billion to get there is the kind of math only an AI lab can stomach.
Investors keep supplying the fuel. Earlier this year, OpenAI closed a $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion valuation , the largest private capital raise on record , backed by SoftBank, Nvidia, and more than two dozen other firms. That valuation has drawn skepticism from some of OpenAI’s own backers, one of whom told the FT that underwriting the round required assuming a future public valuation north of $1.2 trillion.
That brings the IPO into focus. OpenAI has filed confidentially with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission and is preparing to go public, targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion. A listing at that level would rank among the biggest in history. The spending figures now circulating offer the first detailed look at what prospective shareholders would actually be buying.
The harder number to parse is the loss. Leaked financials put OpenAI’s 2025 net loss at around $39 billion, widened by restructuring and other non-cash charges. Stripping those out, the operating loss appears closer to $8 billion. Those two figures tell very different stories, and which one matters more will depend on how much of the larger number proves to be one-time rather than structural. OpenAI has not published audited accounts, and the company declined to comment on the leaked data.
What is not in dispute is the spending trajectory. OpenAI has told investors it expects to commit roughly $600 billion to AI infrastructure through 2030. The $34 billion spent last year, on that timeline, is just the first installment.
(Source: The Next Web)
