Anthropic and OpenAI account for cloud-partner sales differently, making it difficult for investors to compare the private companies’ revenue. Anthropic reports the gross value of contracts sold through partners such as Amazon and Google as revenue. OpenAI records only its net share after Microsoft takes its cut.
For example, if a customer pays $100 through a cloud marketplace, Anthropic books the full amount as revenue and records the cloud provider’s share as a cost. OpenAI records only its portion of the sale.
The distinction came to light after reports circulated an inflated annualized revenue figure for OpenAI. Investors had used Anthropic’s gross-revenue method to try to create an apples-to-apples comparison.