Report: OpenAI's Audited Expenses Hit $34 Billion Ahead of Trillion-Dollar IPO Push

OpenAI reportedly spent $34 billion over the past year, according to audited financial figures cited by people familiar with the matter, as the company moves ahead with plans for an initial public offering that could value it above $1 trillion.

Of that total, roughly $19 billion went toward research and development, with sales, marketing, and other operating costs adding close to $6 billion, the figures show. The scale of spending underscores how costly it has become to stay competitive at the frontier of large language model development, where compute and specialized talent dominate the budget.

Investors have continued backing OpenAI despite the steep costs, betting that its position in generative AI justifies the spend. People close to the matter say that after stripping out non-cash items tied to corporate restructuring and changes in the value of convertible investor stakes, computing costs and R&D still make up the bulk of real expenses.

The spending comes as AI companies face tightening competition over computing power and race to ship more capable multimodal models. OpenAI is said to have confidentially filed paperwork for a public listing as it shifts further from its nonprofit roots toward a more commercially oriented structure.

If the IPO proceeds at the valuation investors are anticipating, it would mark a major milestone in OpenAI's commercialization and could set a benchmark for how the broader AGI sector is valued, with ripple effects across global tech markets watching closely for signs of where the ceiling really sits.