OpenAI’s Q2 revenue grew 18% as Anthropic’s surged 14-fold

OpenAI told its investors that second-quarter revenue rose 18% from the prior quarter to $6.7 billion, even as losses continued to widen — a disclosure that left some shareholders disappointed given the explosive growth posted by rival Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal News Corp ↗ 2.48% reported Tuesday.wsj

The figures land at a moment of intensifying competition in the frontier AI market. Anthropic's preliminary Q2 revenue exceeded $11.5 billion, a more than 14-fold increase from $787 million in the year-ago period and up from $4.73 billion in Q1, according to Bloomberg. That performance puts Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate above $65 billion, dwarfing OpenAI's roughly $40 billion.news.futunn+2

Widening Losses Cloud IPO Prospects

OpenAI's operating margin deteriorated further into negative territory during the quarter, moving the company away from profitability ahead of a planned initial public offering. The company's net loss widened from $5 billion in 2024 to approximately $39 billion in 2025, driven by massive research and infrastructure spending. Morningstar ↗ 0.96% analysts noted in early August that a realistic IPO window has shifted from Q4 2026 to mid-to-late 2027, citing the company's missed revenue targets and the mismatch between fixed infrastructure obligations and variable revenue.finance.yahoo+2

Anthropic, by contrast, reported positive adjusted operating income for Q2 — the first time a frontier AI lab has crossed that threshold. The achievement, while not equivalent to net profitability, signals that Anthropic is covering a portion of its operating costs, a milestone OpenAI has yet to reach.forbes+1

Coding Tools Drive Diverging Trajectories

The gap between the two companies traces largely to enterprise adoption of AI coding agents. Anthropic's Claude has gained traction in developer workflows, where usage-based billing tied to API call volume and context length can scale faster than per-seat subscription models. OpenAI missed multiple monthly revenue targets earlier this year after ceding share to Anthropic in coding and enterprise segments, according to Morningstar.global.morningstar+1

Anthropic's revenue trajectory has been remarkably steep: $9 billion annualized at the end of 2025, $14 billion in February, $30 billion in April, and $47 billion by late May when it closed its $65 billion Series H round.valueaddvc

Sovereign Capital and the Valuation Question

Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds have positioned themselves across both companies. Abu Dhabi's MGX holds stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, while the Qatar Investment Authority participated in Anthropic's Series H. The diversified bets reflect a consensus that AI will become next-generation infrastructure — but uncertainty over which company will lead.news.futunn

For public market investors watching from the sidelines, the question now centers on whether OpenAI can accelerate growth before attempting to list, or whether Anthropic's momentum will reshape the AI IPO landscape entirely.