HOBOKEN, N.J. — The $20 billion by which reported annualized revenue at OpenAI exceeded the figure the company gave investors has been found in the couch of a research analyst in Hoboken, N.J., according to the analyst’s employer, which said the money had been there since July.
A report Thursday said OpenAI had told investors its annualized revenue was near $50 billion at the end of September, about $20 billion below the roughly $70 billion that had been widely reported. Technology stocks fell on the report. Sources familiar with the figures said the difference reflected how revenue was being counted, not lost sales, with some firms using gross figures for a competitor’s cloud sales and OpenAI using net.
At 6:40 p.m. Thursday, a senior analyst at Halberd Street Research Group found the missing amount, in full, wedged between the cushions of his living room couch, according to the firm’s head of equity research, Ian Ferraro.
“It was between the cushions, with the remote and a Chipotle receipt from July,” Ferraro said. “He had been looking for his keys. He found the keys, and then he found the revenue, and he sat there for about 20 minutes and then called me.”
Ferraro said the analyst, who asked not to be named because the couch is not a recognized source, had been working from home on the $70 billion figure since July, and had “set it down for a minute” while eating lunch. “It slid out of the spreadsheet and into the furniture, and we all assumed it was a methodology issue,” Ferraro said. “It was. It was a couch methodology.”
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center had reviewed the couch. “The $20 billion was present, in cash-equivalent form, at a density of about 4.1 billion per cushion, plus a small quantity of crumbs,” Teller said. “We were able to confirm that none of it was recognized as revenue at any point, which is consistent with where it was. Further study is needed into how it fits in a couch.”
The firm said the recovered $20 billion has been placed in a folder marked “gross” and returned to the spreadsheet, where it was immediately flagged as gross by a second analyst, who removed it, and returned to the couch.
Dr. Chad Brickhouse, a senior fellow at the Institute for Common Sense, said the discovery was predictable. “If a number is wrong by exactly the size of a couch, it’s in a couch,” Brickhouse said by phone from a car wash. “It’s just common sense. People keep asking where the money went. Look at the furniture.”
The research firm said it would continue to report the figure as “approximately $50 billion, plus a couch.” According to the original report, OpenAI declined to comment on the discrepancy. The Reporter has not asked it about the couch.
Ferraro said the analyst had been given the weekend off, and had asked that the couch be returned to him. “He says he sleeps better with it,” Ferraro said. “We told him that is what the $20 billion said.”