Claimed vs reported revenue, gross vs net
Every revenue figure on the scoreboard links to its source and shows its basis and as-of date, because "revenue" means different things depending on who is reporting it and how. Here is what each lab's number actually is, and isn't.
Claimed vs reported
The methodology's rule: when a company or its investors push a higher number than what is later reported, the board shows both and scores the reported one.
The clearest case is OpenAI. An annualized figure near $70B had circulated to investors. Axios reported on 8 Oct 2026 that OpenAI's actual annualized run rate is about $50B, counting only OpenAI's retained share of partner sales (such as Azure), roughly $20B less than the earlier figure. The scoreboard shows $70B as "claimed" and scores the $50B "reported" figure.
Moonshot AI (Kimi) has a milder version of the same pattern, but it's a forward target rather than an inflated past figure: Bloomberg, via Silicon Republic (6 Oct 2026), reports Moonshot's current ARR at about $1B, with the company targeting $2B ARR by December 2026. The $2B is labeled "claimed" because it hasn't happened yet, not because it's disputed.
Gross vs net accounting
Anthropic and OpenAI both sell through cloud partners, but they count that revenue differently. Anthropic books partner sales gross; OpenAI nets out the partner's retained share. That means Anthropic's $67.2B annualized figure (Q3 2026 revenue of $16.8B, told to investors 14 Oct 2026, per CNBC) and OpenAI's $50B are not directly comparable even though both are "annualized revenue run rate." The methodology states this plainly: "Anthropic books some cloud-partner revenue gross and OpenAI books it net, so they're not perfectly comparable."
Quarter times 4: figures the site computes itself
Three labs' revenue figures on the board are not a run rate the company published, but the most recent quarter multiplied by 4:
- Anthropic: $67.2B, from Q3 2026 revenue of $16.8B x 4, per CNBC (opens in new tab). Anthropic books cloud-partner sales gross (see above).
- Alibaba (Qwen): AI-related product revenue of $7.296B, from a June-quarter figure of $1.824B (RMB12.376B) x 4, per Alibaba's June Quarter 2026 results. This is a parent-segment metric, not Qwen alone.
- xAI: $3.272B, from a Q1 2026 segment revenue of $818M x 4, per Morningstar's read of SpaceX's S-1 filing. This figure includes X's ads and subscriptions revenue, not just xAI's model business, and the same filing shows a $2.47B operating loss in that quarter.
A single quarter x 4 is an average, not a forecast, so it will lag a fast-growing company's actual pace and can overstate a shrinking one's.
Third-party estimates
DeepSeek's $1B annualized revenue figure (as of September 2026) comes from Sacra (a third-party estimate), not from DeepSeek itself. The scoreboard flags this explicitly: "This is an estimate, not a company disclosure." It sits in the same table as company-reported figures, but it carries a different kind of uncertainty.
Every revenue figure on the board
| Lab | Reported figure | Basis | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $67.2B | Q3 revenue x 4, gross accounting | 2026-09-30 | CNBC |
| OpenAI | $50B | annualized run rate, net of partner share | 2026-09-30 | Axios |
| OpenAI (claimed) | $70B | earlier investor-facing gross-up figure | 2026-10-08 | Axios |
| Alibaba (Qwen) | $7.296B | AI-related product revenue, June quarter x 4 | 2026-06-30 | Alibaba results |
| xAI | $3.272B | Q1 2026 segment revenue x 4, incl. X ads/subscriptions | 2026-03-31 | Morningstar (SpaceX S-1) |
| Mistral | $1B | ARR, "slightly above $1B" per CFO | 2026-09-08 | WSJ |
| Moonshot (Kimi) | $1B | current ARR | 2026-10-06 | Silicon Republic (Bloomberg) |
| Moonshot (claimed) | $2B | ARR expected by December, forward target | 2026-10-06 | Silicon Republic (Bloomberg) |
| DeepSeek | $1B | annualized revenue, September, third-party estimate | 2026-09-30 | Sacra |
Google DeepMind and Meta have no row here: both are divisions of public companies that don't disclose lab-level revenue. Z.ai (Zhipu) has none because no sourced financials have been gathered yet.
Sources
- Axios (opens in new tab) (8 Oct 2026)
- Anthropic's third-quarter revenue hits $16.8 billion (opens in new tab) (CNBC, 15 Oct 2026)
- Alibaba Group Announces June Quarter 2026 Results (opens in new tab)
- Morningstar: xAI financials (opens in new tab)
- WSJ: Mistral AI exceeds $24 billion valuation (opens in new tab) (8 Sep 2026)
- Bloomberg: Moonshot closes round at $50bn valuation before 2027 IPO (opens in new tab) (6 Oct 2026)
- Sacra: DeepSeek (opens in new tab) (estimate)