OpenAI Exposes Financial Black Hole on Eve of IPO: Q1 Net Loss Exceeds $21.3 Billion, 665 Billion Yuan Computing Power Purchase Commitments Weigh Heavily

TradingKey - According to a report by The Information on June 16, OpenAI disclosed multiple financial metrics in a document to shareholders. OpenAI's first-quarter revenue for 2026 reached $5.7 billion, while its cash burn during the same period surged to $3.7 billion, with both figures roughly tripling compared to the same period last year.

According to documents disclosed by the Financial Times, OpenAI's full-year spending reached $34 billion last year, with a net loss of $38.5 billion—nearly eight times its full-year net loss of $5.1 billion in 2024.

These figures highlight OpenAI's aggressive cash burn ahead of its IPO, drawing intense market scrutiny. Beyond this, what other financial black holes have been revealed by OpenAI's recently disclosed data, and will they affect its public debut?

Revenue Surges, but Cash Burn Continues

OpenAI's cash burn in the first quarter of 2026 has already exceeded half of its revenue, which is undoubtedly a staggering figure. More notably, both metrics are growing almost in tandem, indicating that OpenAI's current business model is not yet able to automatically reduce unit costs through economies of scale. If this pattern continues, it will be difficult for OpenAI to recoup its costs. According to OpenAI's forecasts, full-year cash burn will reach $25 billion this year and is projected to more than double to $57 billion next year.

Operating costs and R&D expenses are staggering.

Q1 net loss exceeded $21.3 billion, of which approximately $12.4 billion consisted of non-cash accounting charges. Even after stripping out these expenses, the Q1 operating loss remained as high as $9.3 billion. This included over $2.3 billion in employee stock-based compensation, which more than doubled year-over-year, indicating that OpenAI's actual operational pressure remains staggeringly high.

R&D is another major expense, with Q1 R&D spending reaching $8.6 billion, covering core investments such as model training. In addition, the Q1 cost of revenue was $3.5 billion, primarily driven by model inference costs. Although the gross margin improved, rising from 33% in the same period last year to 39% in the first quarter of this year, the resulting gross profit of approximately $2.2 billion is still far from sufficient to cover its massive R&D expenditures.

An analysis by Fortune points out that OpenAI's two largest expenses are currently R&D and marketing. Cutting these two budgets, combined with raising prices or opening up new revenue streams, might eventually help the company turn a profit. However, reducing R&D investment is the most difficult challenge, as AI companies must intensify R&D efforts to develop the highest-performing models in order to retain customers.

Furthermore, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is considering significantly slashing its token fees to launch a price war against rival Anthropic to win over customers, a move that could erode its recently improved gross margin.

Computing power procurement commitments reach up to $665 billion

As of the end of last year, OpenAI's computing power procurement commitments to cloud service providers were estimated to be as high as $665 billion, nearly 20 times its total expenditures for the entire year. While most of these commitments are not yet reflected on the balance sheet, they represent a very real and heavy burden for OpenAI.

Once these computing power purchases begin to materialize and are reflected in OpenAI's financial metrics, the company will face much stricter scrutiny from the market. If demand for AI computing power begins to slow, OpenAI will still have to foot the bill for this potential expenditure, and these procurement commitments could become the trigger for an implosion of the company.