OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar announced to employees that their annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in July 2026 exceeded the entire second quarter ARR, emphasizing sustained growth driven by strong adoption of the GPT-5.6 series, enterprise product ChatGPT Work, and Code tool Codex.

But some others said she was referring to Net New ARR. The new annualized subscription revenue added in July alone exceeded OpenAI’s total actual revenue for all 3 months of Q2 combined.

The company aims to justify its $852 billion valuation ahead of a potential IPO, with current efforts to attract enterprise and developer clients to fund expansion and infrastructure investment plans.