OpenAI is recovering from the sluggish period it went through earlier this year. According to Bloomberg, which cited anonymous sources, the company's quarterly revenue surpassed $10 billion for the first time, driven by strong demand for its recent AI models. If accurate, that would mark an almost 50% increase from the $6.7 billion in sales the company reportedly posted in the second quarter. It would also represent a substantial acceleration in its revenue growth rate, which was previously reported to be around 18% between the first and second quarters of the year.

The company's profitability outlook also seems to have brightened, with its adjusted operating margin improving from -150% in the second quarter to -109% in the third quarter, according to the report.

OpenAI, one of the earliest companies to commercialize AI models, wasn't exactly struggling to keep expanding its top line — 18% growth on top of $5.7 billion in quarterly revenue is enormous by any standard, particularly compared with most software businesses. But those gains were being overshadowed by its chief rival Anthropic, which has taken the lead in capturing the enterprise market for AI models and recently reported Q3 revenue of $17 billion.

OpenAI's broader approach helped it draw a large user base and gain popularity early on, and it says it has more than a billion users, though it's reasonable to assume most of those are free users or subscribers to its cheapest plans. Still, the company trailed Anthropic in serving enterprises, a market where the Claude-maker has pulled ahead, at least in terms of revenue growth.

OpenAI has recently benefited from a combination of tighter pricing, discounts, improving models, and a greater emphasis on building more enterprise-focused products and AI agents that can help people complete tasks. According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has now reached an annual revenue run rate of $50 billion. Meanwhile, Anthropic, which is pursuing a $1.4 trillion valuation in an IPO likely to happen soon, said yesterday that its annual revenue run rate had climbed by $10 billion within a month to $81 billion as of the end of October. (Note that OpenAI and Anthropic calculate their annualized revenue differently: Anthropic counts sales made by its cloud partners, while OpenAI only reports its share of some sales through its partners.)

None of those figures are small, of course, but the companies are also competing with models from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, as well as a plethora of cheaper but still highly capable models from open-source AI labs, especially those from China.