OpenAI's third-quarter revenue reached about $10 billion. Check that operating losses still widened to $10.9 billion, not that the company is close to profit

On Nov. 10, 2026, The Wall Street Journal published an exclusive by Berber Jin under the headline "OpenAI Continues to Suffer Heavy Losses as Revenue Rises to $10 Billion." The opening sentence, confirmed on the Journal's own page, says OpenAI grew revenue by roughly 50% to $10 billion from the second quarter to the third, but continued to report heavy operating losses, showing mixed results in its effort to catch up with industry leader Anthropic.

The company shared the figures with investors on Tuesday, the same week Anthropic was preparing to start a closely watched initial public offering. An initial public offering is a first sale of shares to public investors. The Journal said Anthropic's third-quarter revenue was $17 billion, with an operating loss of $567 million.

A rise to $10 billion in quarterly revenue is a real increase in scale. It is not evidence that OpenAI is close to covering its operating costs.

The rest of the figures come from the Hindustan Times reprint of the same Journal article, which matches the opening paragraphs, the photograph caption, and the writer credit. OpenAI told investors that its adjusted operating margin improved from -150% to -109% from the second quarter to the third, according to documents viewed by the Journal. Even so, operating losses ticked up from $10.1 billion to $10.9 billion, based on those figures.

Those two facts can be true at the same time. If third-quarter revenue was about $10 billion, a -109% adjusted operating margin lines up with a $10.9 billion loss. The loss is still larger than the revenue. What improved is the loss as a share of revenue, not the dollar amount.

Reuters, in a report carried by Investing.com, confirmed the same margin and loss figures as coming from documents viewed by the Journal, and said OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The Journal frames the quarter as a chase in the enterprise market, meaning sales to companies rather than individual ChatGPT users. The reprint says OpenAI has cut the prices of its latest models to grow market share, and recently hired a new chief revenue officer, Dali Rajic, to focus on this part of the business, which is steadily accounting for a larger share of overall sales.

A fair case in the company's favor sits in that mix: faster revenue growth, a less severe loss rate, a dedicated sales chief, and price cuts aimed at winning company customers. That is a coherent plan. It does not turn a $10.9 billion quarterly operating loss into a profit.

The Anthropic comparison is the Journal's own benchmark. $17 billion in revenue and a $567 million operating loss is a different loss rate, about 3% of revenue if those figures are taken as written. The available text does not explain whether the two companies define revenue the same way. Until they do, the gap is a useful reference, not an exact comparison.

This desk could not read the full Journal page beyond the first two paragraphs. If the exclusive contained a fuller income statement, a definition of the adjusted items, or a distinction between cash and accounting figures, that material is not in the text we could verify. Adjusted operating margin is OpenAI's own measure as relayed by the Journal. We do not have the list of items that were added back or taken out.

News Corp, which owns the Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI. The reprint states this at the end of the article. The figures can still be checked against later disclosures. Readers should know about the commercial relationship when they weigh the story.

The fair case for OpenAI is that a company investing heavily to win enterprise customers can see dollar losses rise even as the loss per dollar of sales shrinks. Price cuts would make that pattern more likely in the short run. The new chief revenue officer, and the Journal's description of enterprise becoming a larger share of sales, fit that strategy.

The risk is simpler. If the next reported quarter shows dollar losses still rising, while Anthropic, once it is public, reports a much smaller loss on a comparable or larger revenue base, the catch-up story will be harder to tell. If dollar losses start to fall, and the adjusted margin moves closer to zero, the Tuesday investor update will look like an early point on a genuine improvement path. Closer to zero here means revenue covering operating costs, not a slogan.

Over the next two quarters, the checkable test is whether OpenAI's operating losses in dollars start to narrow, not only whether the loss shrinks as a share of revenue. Anthropic's coming public filings, if the listing goes ahead, will give a sharper public comparison. A $10 billion quarter is a milestone in scale. It is not a profit.

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