OpenAI spent $34 billion in 2025, according to audited financial figures reported by the Financial Times — a staggering sum that underscores just how expensive it is to build and scale frontier AI.
According to the Financial Times, the breakdown reveals $19 billion went toward research and development, while nearly $6 billion was spent on sales and marketing. The figures reflect mounting costs across model development, infrastructure, and what the FT described as rapid expansion.
Reuters, citing the Financial Times report, confirmed the $34 billion figure and noted the spending comes ahead of a planned IPO. The numbers were drawn from audited financials, lending them more weight than the internal projections or estimates the company has previously shared publicly.
To put the scale in context: $34 billion in a single year rivals the annual revenue of many Fortune 500 companies. OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit research lab, has transformed into one of the most heavily funded private companies in history — and its cost structure is growing accordingly.
The timing matters. Companies heading toward a public offering typically open their books to scrutiny, and these audited figures will be among the first hard numbers investors can evaluate. The question the IPO market will have to answer: can OpenAI's revenues — and eventual profits — ever catch up to its breathtaking rate of spending?
If they can't, the company's valuation will rest almost entirely on a bet about the future of AI — which is exactly the kind of wager that tends to define, and sometimes break, technology eras.