💰 OpenAI lost $1.22 for every dollar they made in Q1

https://preview.redd.it/z3z98b7u483h1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6e13f43c0cee56d811c435d86b29c18eb4f083d4 Sri Muppidi over at The Information just reported that OpenAI's operating margin for Q1 2026 sat at minus 122 percent. Under Sam Altman, they basically burned through an extra $1.22 for every single dollar they brought in, and that's even after stripping out massive financial line items like stock-based comp. Their quarterly revenue actually hit $5.7 billion, mostly driven by their coding assistant Codex, corporate sales, and those early ad tests they've been running inside ChatGPT. But even with that, their adjusted quarterly loss still reached a massive $6.95 billion. Meanwhile, ChatGPT's weekly active users reached 905 million, missing their 1 billion target, though their paid subscriber base did grow from 47 million to 55 million. For some context, their main rival Anthropic is nearing a $45 billion annual revenue pace, and they're actually expecting to pull in $600 million in operating profit on $11 billion revenue in Q2. OpenAI's projected annual run rate is sitting around $30 billion. These soaring operating losses and the fact that user growth is flattening out on their main platform are really starting to raise questions about whether the AI industry is actually commercially viable, and it's already hurting partner stocks. Both of these tech giants are clearly trying to optimize their financials ahead of potential IPOs planned for Q4 this year. Source:[https://the-decoder.com/openai-burned-through-1-22-per-dollar-earned-even-after-stripping-out-stock-based-compensation/](https://the-decoder.com/openai-burned-through-1-22-per-dollar-earned-even-after-stripping-out-stock-based-compensation/)