According to reports from Techcrunch and blogger Ed Zitron, recently leaked internal documents reveal the financial flows between OpenAI and Microsoft. These documents show that the operating costs of OpenAI's models are extremely high, and according to these figures, the goal of profitability seems still far away.
According to Zitron, OpenAI paid Microsoft approximately $493.8 million in 2024 as a 20% revenue share. This amount increased to $865.9 million in the first three quarters of 2025. These figures have not been officially confirmed. Techcrunch pointed out that the revenue sharing is two-way, with Microsoft returning about 20% of the revenue it earned from Bing and Azure OpenAI services back to OpenAI. This means that the leaked payments reflect Microsoft's net income after deducting the portion paid to OpenAI.
Image source note: The image was generated by AI, and the image licensing service is Midjourney
Based on the 20% revenue share, these payments imply that OpenAI's minimum revenue in 2024 was approximately $2.47 billion, and this number reached $4.33 billion in the first nine months of 2025. In fact, the actual revenue may be higher, as the part returned by Microsoft to OpenAI is not included. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned that its annual revenue is expected to reach $2 billion by the end of 2025.
Zitron also pointed out that OpenAI's inference costs - the core computing and operational costs required to run its models - reached $3.77 billion in 2024, and soared to $8.67 billion in the first nine months of 2025. Although Microsoft's credit line covered the training costs of new models, inference expenses mainly relied on cash.
Combining these data, it shows that OpenAI has already spent a huge amount of money to maintain AI models, far exceeding expectations. Zitron said, "According to these numbers, OpenAI may be the startup with the highest capital consumption in history. The cost of running large language models seems unable to be supported by revenue. Even if the revenue reaches the reported level, OpenAI's inference expenses on Azure will devour this revenue, and it seems to grow linearly with increasing revenue." In addition, OpenAI is also facing high training costs, personnel expenses, and other operating costs. At present, OpenAI and Microsoft have not commented on this news.
Key points:
- 💰 OpenAI paid Microsoft approximately $493.8 million in 2024, and about $865.9 million in the first three quarters of 2025.
- 📈 Inference costs reached $3.77 billion in 2024, and $8.67 billion in the first nine months of 2025.
- 🚀 Actual revenue may be higher, but OpenAI's profitability remains far away, with expenses far exceeding revenue.
