OpenAI is accelerating its revenue growth at a remarkable pace. The world's most influential artificial intelligence company's chief financial officer revealed in an internal meeting that the company's July monthly annualized recurring revenue (ARR) increase already exceeded the entire second quarter, signaling an acceleration in its commercialization process.

On Thursday, according to partial meeting transcripts obtained by CNBC, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar stated during an all-hands internal meeting on Wednesday that the company's July ARR surpassed the entire second quarter. "And the second quarter itself was quite impressive," Friar added. Board Chairman Bret Taylor also attended the meeting.

Earlier, OpenAI's revenue data released in April showed an annualized recurring revenue of $25 billion for 2026. Calculations indicate that the ARR for the second quarter (April to June) ranged from $25 billion to $42 billion, meaning the second quarter added a net total of approximately $17 billion in ARR.

Combined with the existing $42 billion at the end of June, OpenAI's ARR by the end of July is approaching $60 billion, narrowing the gap with Anthropic. Previously, TickerTrends tracking showed that Anthropic's 2026 ARR was approximately $74.1 billion.

This statement comes as OpenAI faces intense competition from Anthropic and a wave of low-cost open-source models. The company is actively signaling a healthy business outlook to its employees while building valuation support for a potential large-scale IPO.

Growth Drivers: GPT-5.6, Enterprise Agents, and Codex

Friar and Taylor attributed the growth momentum during the meeting to three main lines: the release of the GPT-5.6 series models, the new enterprise AI agent product ChatGPT Work, and the rapid adoption of the AI coding tool Codex.

Taylor acknowledged at the meeting that OpenAI had once fallen behind Anthropic in the programming market and needed to catch up. However, he expressed encouragement about the growth momentum of Codex. "You will see that those users who deeply use Claude Code eventually face high bills and start looking for alternatives," Taylor said.

According to a report from The Information in March this year, citing sources, OpenAI's annualized revenue had already surpassed $25 billion. Since then, with the explosive growth of Codex, the revenue curve has become significantly steeper.

Competitive Pressure: Anthropic's Valuation Surpasses, Gap Narrowing

Behind OpenAI's accelerated growth is an increasingly fierce market battle. Anthropic earlier this year surpassed OpenAI in valuation and announced in May that its revenue run rate had exceeded $47 billion—while the company's full-year 2025 revenue was about $10 billion. Anthropic's Claude Code tool has rapidly gained popularity among developers and is considered the core driver of its revenue surge.

At the same time, open-source models from China continue to exert pressure. Earlier this month, China's Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, claiming it surpasses the flagship systems of OpenAI and Anthropic on some benchmark tests and can be accessed at a lower cost.

Taylor acknowledged at the meeting that Anthropic had a strong start to the year but emphasized that OpenAI is regaining the initiative.

IPO Prospects: $852 Billion Valuation Awaits Market Test

OpenAI, currently valued at $852 billion, is under performance pressure to match this figure. The company filed a confidential IPO application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June, simultaneously with Anthropic, but neither has disclosed a specific listing timeline.

In terms of infrastructure investment, OpenAI disclosed to investors in February that it plans to invest a cumulative total of about $600 billion in computing power by 2030. According to a CNBC report earlier this week, the company is currently in negotiations with Nvidia for up to $250 billion in financial support to lease a large AI data center in Ohio.

To support these massive infrastructure expenditures, OpenAI needs to continuously expand its corporate and developer user base to generate sufficient revenue cash flow. The July revenue data could serve as one of the most compelling arguments in its IPO roadshow.