OpenAI CFO: Q3 was a 'blockbuster quarter,' revenue jumped 50%

OpenAI's ( OPAI.PVT ) Q3 revenue rose nearly 50% quarter over quarter to $10 billion, with an annual run rate of roughly $50 billion, CFO Sarah Friar told Deirdre Bosa on Tuesday.

That's better than the 18% growth the company saw in Q2, according to the Wall Street Journal .

According to Friar, the growth was driven by OpenAI's frontier research and enterprise business.

"Our enterprise business doubled quarter over quarter," she explained, adding that OpenAI's revenue is now split 50/50 between its enterprise and consumer business.

"What's driving that is products like Coding, Cyber, starting to get more virtual assistants like Dots into the enterprise," Friar said.

The company's small- and medium-business offering also grew more in the third quarter than in the prior six quarters, she added.

Friar also said that OpenAI's consumer business is continuing to grow, with sales improving 20% quarter over quarter and subscriptions topping 100 million users. The company has 1.2 billion weekly active users.

OpenAI rival Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) kicked off its roadshow on Tuesday ahead of its planned initial public offering, which could take place Nov. 19 or Nov. 20.

Anthropic's own enterprise efforts have been a boon for its bottom line.

The company's revenue grew $1,206% to $33.2 billion through the first nine months of the year that ended Sept. 30.

For the first six months of the year through June 30, Anthropic's revenue was $16.3 billion. The company recorded sales of $4.6 billion throughout all of 2025.

Friar said Anthropic's enterprise success has shown her that OpenAI needs to focus on entering into distribution agreements with third-party cloud service providers.

"Part of it was we were really stuck on this [Microsoft] Azure contract that we had," she explained. "I think getting that unlocked, Anthropic showed me just the power of that model, and I think for us that can be a very big tailwind in 2027."

Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com . Follow him on X at @DanielHowley or reach out on Signal or Telegram.