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OpenAI internal letter: Anthropic overstated revenue by $8 billion, still less than OpenAI's

OpenAI internal letter: Anthropic overstated revenue by $8 billion, still less than OpenAI's

June 29, 2026
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OpenAI internal letter: Anthropic overstated revenue by $8 billion, still less than OpenAI

A leaked four-page internal memo from Denice Drescher, OpenAI's Chief Revenue Officer, reportedly obtained by Readhub, sharply questions the revenue figures recently released by rival Anthropic, calling them "heavily inflated" and alleging that Anthropic's products cannot sustain platform-level competition.

The Core Dispute: Financial Gimmicks Behind the $30 Billion Figure

A week ago, Anthropic announced that its annualized revenue had hit $30 billion, seemingly surpassing OpenAI at a stroke. But the memo claims those numbers are inflated:

Statistical Differences: OpenAI accuses Anthropic of using the "gross method" for revenue sharing with cloud providers, padding its revenue by $8 billion.

True Ranking: If recalculated using the "net method" standard for public companies, Anthropic's actual annualized revenue would be around $22 billion — still below OpenAI's $25 billion.

Compute Bottleneck: The memo claims Anthropic has been unable to secure sufficient compute capacity, resulting in a subpar user experience for its flagship model Claude in real-world use.

Strategic Battle: A Niche Developer Tool vs. an Enterprise Platform

Beyond the financial accusations, OpenAI took a swipe at Anthropic's overall product strategy:

Product Specialization: It criticized Anthropic for being overly focused on coding use cases — while technically deep, such specialization makes it hard to win the broader platform battle.

System Building: OpenAI portrays itself as building a full enterprise AI ecosystem, devoted to "democratizing AI," rather than just a single-purpose tool.

Talent Acquisition: On the same day, OpenAI announced it had acquired the AI finance app company Hiro Finance. The move is seen as a deliberate "learning" effort — by absorbing financial talent to bolster its presence in lifestyle and professional use cases, it aims to counter Anthropic's vertical push.

Industry Perspective: The Anxiety Beneath an $85.2 Billion Valuation

Beneath the public sparring lies the capital market's growing caution about the AI bubble:

Valuation Discount: Although OpenAI's valuation has reached $85.2 billion, investors are increasingly skeptical about its strategic pivot and revenue authenticity.

Market Trends: In contrast, Anthropic shares have been eagerly bought in the secondary market, while OpenAI shares have been largely ignored — a dynamic that may explain the aggressive tone of this internal memo.

Conclusion: The Model Crisis Behind the Revenue Race

That OpenAI would leak an internal memo to damage a competitor's credibility signals just how brutal the AI race has become. For users, the real question isn't who reports higher revenue — it's who, in an era of compute scarcity, can deliver true AGI without compromising intelligence or cooking the books.

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