A number is only as good as what it counts

A run-rate depends on its definition

OpenAI told investors that it hit roughly $50 billion in annualized revenue at the end of September, CNBC confirmed, lower than the $68 billion figure widely reported late last month. A person familiar with the matter said the $68 billion figure included gross revenue from OpenAI's partners, and TechCrunch notes that OpenAI and Anthropic calculate their annualized revenue differently, with Anthropic counting sales made by its cloud partners while OpenAI does not.

An AI listing pulled on volatility

Shares of Nvidia, Oracle, CoreWeave and other artificial intelligence names sank lower on Thursday after the market learned more details about OpenAI's revenue. Meanwhile Firmus, an Australian AI data center operator backed by Nvidia, has withdrawn its planned IPO, citing market volatility and conditions, the company said in an emailed statement to CNBC, and it had reportedly sought to raise $5 billion at a valuation of about $30.6 billion.

Show the query behind the figure

Anthropic launched Dashboards in beta, which connects data sources like BigQuery, Databricks, Snowflake or Salesforce and turns them into auto-updating live dashboards from a text prompt. Every number shows its underlying query, Anthropic says, and for a finance team that gives a reviewer something concrete to check before a figure reaches a decision.

Ask for the definition first

Here is a habit for this week: when a figure lands on our desk, ask what it counts, who is counting it, and whether we can see where it came from. A number that arrives with its definition is easier to compare, and one that does not deserves a question before it goes into a paper or a decision.