“Nevertheless, OpenAI and Anthropic's revenues amount to, by my estimates, more than half of the entire revenue of the generative AI industry, including the hyperscalers.”
Our reading:
By the author's estimate, OpenAI and Anthropic account for more than half of all generative AI industry revenue, hyperscalers included.
Assessment: Unresolved
What happened
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Unresolved
We checked, and the evidence so far doesn’t settle it.
Judged on a plain reading. They named no measure, so we used the reading a typical informed reader would take. It is spelled out under “How we judged it”.
Evidence up to . Checked .
Why
Contemporary and retrospective reporting supplies revenue rates for OpenAI and Anthropic, but not a comparable industry total. Microsoft's disclosed AI revenue and Epoch's discussion of reseller revenue are material challenges to the claimed majority. Their different dates and coverage prevent a decisive comparison. The claim remains unresolved because the denominator is missing, not because annualized revenue has been rejected in favor of an unstated quarterly-sales measure.
Caveats
- The post does not define the industry boundary or treatment of transactions between suppliers.
- Anthropic's retrospective July figure is not dated within the month.
- No supported share calculation can be made from these mismatched inputs.
Evidence (4 items)
Context only: TechCrunch,
$10 billion
Why it matters: This supplies one component of the contemporary numerator. It does not measure Anthropic or the industry total, and the article describes the figure as annual recurring revenue.
- Where
- First body paragraph
- Publisher
- TechCrunch
- Kind of source
- News report
- Measures
- OpenAI, Reported annual recurring revenue, USD billions of dollars per year, company reported, 2025-06 to 2025-06
- About events on
- Published
Context only: Bloomberg, published by the Los Angeles Times,
$4 billion
Why it matters: This supplies an approximate Anthropic revenue rate near the post. It does not specify whether the measurement preceded July 21 or establish a comparable industry denominator.
- Publisher
- Bloomberg, published by the Los Angeles Times
- Kind of source
- News report
- Measures
- Anthropic, Annualized revenue run rate, USD billions of dollars per year, estimate, 2025-07 to 2025-07
- About events on
- Published
Context only: Microsoft,
$13 billion
Why it matters: This is a substantial hyperscaler revenue figure that a denominator must address. It predates the target period and describes AI broadly, so it cannot be directly subtracted from or compared with the claimed generative-AI share.
- Publisher
- Microsoft
- Kind of source
- Company disclosure: the company describing itself, not an independent finding
- Measures
- Microsoft, AI business annual revenue run rate, USD billions of dollars per year, company reported, ? to 2025-01-29
- About events on
- Published
Context only: Epoch AI,
third-party models
Why it matters: Epoch's analysis highlights the importance of hyperscaler and reseller revenue, which weighs against assuming model developers dominate the whole industry. Its earlier timing and different coverage prevent it from settling the July majority-share claim.
- Publisher
- Epoch AI
- Kind of source
- Independent measurement
- Measures
- Leading AI model developers and hyperscaler resellers, Estimated external model revenue and third-party model resale revenue, USD dollars per year, estimate, 2025-04 to 2025-04
- About events on
- Published
How we judged it
- Kind of claim
- Observation
- Deadline
- None given. We don’t add one.
Conditions
- by author's estimates (their words)
Where we had to interpret
- The ordinary reading is an estimate of the companies' contemporary share of generative-AI revenue at the time of the post.
- Use the latest reported monthly revenue rates available around June and July 2025, through the post date. The surrounding discussion uses annualized figures, so the claim is not restricted to realized April–June sales.
- Annualized rates must be compared with annualized rates; annual totals and full-year forecasts cannot be substituted.
- The numerator combines OpenAI and Anthropic. The denominator includes other generative-AI suppliers and hyperscaler generative-AI services.
- The author's estimate is a qualification of the measurement, not a conditional antecedent.
- A consistent treatment of reseller revenue and payments between suppliers is necessary. The speaker does not specify that treatment.
Right if: A comparable contemporary revenue estimate, including hyperscalers, places OpenAI and Anthropic together above 50% of the total.
Wrong if: A comparable contemporary estimate places their combined share at or below 50%, or a defensible same-basis lower bound for the rest of the industry equals or exceeds their combined revenue.
We wrote this test after the outcome was known.
What would settle it
A contemporaneous industry revenue estimate with consistent annualization, generative-AI coverage and treatment of reseller transactions, or sufficient comparable figures to bound the combined share above or below 50%.
We found 56 claims in this post. See them all.
Full record
Source and dates
Where's Your Ed At, The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble, paragraph 265.
- Said
- We read the source
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence up to
- Checked
We read this wording on 2026-10-28. The post may have been edited after 2025-07-21.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the posts we read.
: Where's Your Ed At, The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble
Nevertheless, OpenAI and Anthropic's revenues amount to, by my estimates, more than half of the entire revenue of the generative AI industry, including the hyperscalers.
- Where
- paragraph 265
- Published
- 2025-07-21
- We read it
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Versions
- Current: Unresolved. Evidence up to 2026-10-28.
What happened to this record
PublishedBy us
Published after both AI reviews and the final check passed.
Held backBy us
A reviewer said our test wasn’t fair to what was actually said.