OpenAI, Adding It Up

Ed Zitron published portions of OpenAI's audited 2025 financials, independently verified by the Financial Times. The headline numbers are remarkable: $13.07 billion in revenue against $34 billion in costs, a $20.92 billion operating loss, a $38.5 billion attributable net loss. The snapshot contained three structural components on which those numbers themselves rest: cash position against burn rate, the related party flows between OpenAI and its largest equity holders, and the accounting choices that classify the headline loss figure.

The cash and burn

The audited balance sheet shows OpenAI ended 2025 with just over $50 billion in assets, roughly half of which is cash. Approximately $25 billion of cash against the $20.92 billion 2025 operating loss — approximately one year of runway from the audited position, on operating expense alone. Forward burn is projected at $25 to $27 billion in 2026 and $57 to $63 billion in 2027. From whence the cash is the structural question the audited document poses; the operational answer has come from subsequent funding, notably the $122 billion Series 7 closed in March 2026, led by Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank.

The related party flows

The 2025 audited financials disclose related party transactions with two of OpenAI's largest equity holders.

OpenAI paid Microsoft $17.2 billion in 2025: $10.59 billion in research and development, $6.05 billion in cost of revenue, $527 million in sales and marketing, $42 million in general and administrative. Microsoft paid OpenAI $303 million.

OpenAI's $13.07 billion in 2025 revenue includes $303 million from Microsoft and $867 million from SoftBank. Both are equity holders. Approximately nine percent of OpenAI's 2025 revenue came from two of its largest investors.

Half of OpenAI's $34 billion 2025 cost stack flowed to Microsoft. The concentration sits in the operating lines: by the reported line items, approximately 81 percent of cost of revenue and 55 percent of research and development were paid to Microsoft, against 9 percent of sales and marketing and 3 percent of general and administrative.

This is a configuration similar to ones we have read at the customer-investee scale in NVIDIA's Three Pillars and at the supplier-investor scale in the CoreWeave reconstruction.

The accounting choices

The headline figure is $38.5 billion attributable net loss. The pre-attribution net loss is $60.4 billion. The gap between them — $21.82 billion — is two accounting allocations: $17.87 billion to noncontrolling members capital and $3.95 billion to redeemable noncontrolling interests.

Separately, the $60.4 billion pre-attribution figure itself includes a $41.55 billion non-cash fair-value adjustment tied to OpenAI's 2025 for-profit conversion — a known, explained consequence of the conversion structure, not part of the question here. The 2025 operating loss is $20.92 billion.

Zitron flagged the noncontrolling allocations directly. "It is unclear what this means... I will not speculate further." The mechanical effect is documented; its meaning, as Zitron said, is not. The classification choice is the same kind that shapes CoreWeave's lease-versus-service fork.

OpenAI's S-1 was filed confidentially on June 8. When it lands publicly, the same components will appear in sharper detail.