GPT-5.6, ChatGPT Work lift OpenAI’s July ARR over Q2

OpenAI’s annualised recurring revenue (ARR) in July exceeded the level recorded during the second quarter, chief financial officer Sarah Friar told employees during an internal meeting, business news channel and website CNBC reported.

According to the report, Friar said, “...Q2 was no slouch.” as she highlighted the company’s revenue growth. Alongside Friar, OpenAI’s board chair, Bret Taylor, attributed the momentum to the launch of the GPT-5.6 series models, the company’s enterprise AI agent ChatGPT Work, and growing adoption of its artificial intelligence (AI) coding tool, Codex.

The update comes as OpenAI is seeking to sustain growth amid the intensified competition from rivals such as Anthropic and lower-cost open-weight AI models, the report said.


CNBC stated that OpenAI is expanding its enterprise and developer customer base to generate the revenue needed to support its AI infrastructure investments. The company told investors in February that it plans to target roughly $600 billion in total compute spending by 2030. It also noted that OpenAI is in discussions with Nvidia for up to $250 billion in funding support to help finance plans to lease a large AI data centre in Ohio.

OpenAI is under pressure to justify its $852 billion valuation as it considers a potential initial public offering (IPO). The company has confidentially filed IPO documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, according to an earlier ET report. The IPO timeline remains undecided.

The report also stated that Anthropic’s growth has intensified competition in the enterprise AI market. As of May, Anthropic said its revenue run rate has exceeded the $47 billion generated during 2025, driven by adoption of its Claude Code coding assistant.

During the meeting, Taylor acknowledged that Anthropic had established an early lead in AI coding tools but said OpenAI was seeing encouraging traction with Codex. "You're seeing people who went deep on Claude Code, ended up with a very high bill, and started looking for an alternative," Taylor said, according to CNBC.

The report also noted that OpenAI faces growing competition from Chinese AI developers. Earlier this month, Moonshot AI introduced Kimi K3, which the company said narrows the gap with leading US AI models and outperforms OpenAI and Anthropic's most capable systems on selected benchmarks.

CNBC reported that OpenAI's latest internal update was aimed at reassuring employees about the company's business performance as it continues to expand its enterprise AI offerings.