By Rebecca Bellan
Publication Date: 2025-11-15 00:47:00
After a year of frenzied dealmaking and rumors of an upcoming IPO, the financial scrutiny into OpenAI is intensifying. Leaked documents obtained by tech blogger Ed Zitron provide more of a glimpse into OpenAI’s financials – specifically its revenue and compute costs over the past couple of years.
Zitron reported this week that in 2024, Microsoft received $493.8 million in revenue share payments from OpenAI. In the first three quarters of 2025, that number jumped to $865.8 million, according to documents he viewed.
OpenAI reportedly shares 20% of its revenue with Microsoft as part of a previous deal where the software giant invested over $13 billion in the powerful AI startup. (Neither the startup nor the people in Redmond have publicly confirmed this percentage.)
However, this is where things get a little sticky because Microsoft also shares revenue with OpenAI, kicking back about 20% of the revenues from Bing and Azure OpenAI Service, a source familiar with the…
