Leaked OpenAI Memo Accuses Anthropic of Inflating Its $30B Run Rate by $8 Billion

OpenAI's Sales Chief Put Anthropic's $30B Valuation in Writing — and Called It Fiction

On April 13, 2026, a 4-page internal memo authored by OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser was leaked to the press. The document accuses Anthropic of inflating its reported annual revenue run rate by approximately $8 billion.

The Receipt

The mechanism, per Dresser's memo: Anthropic recognizes gross revenue on cloud-spend commitments from Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform rather than the net revenue it actually receives after infrastructure costs. The effect is a run rate that reads as roughly $10B when the underlying net figure is closer to $2B. Anthropic has raised at a $61.5B post-money valuation. The memo was circulated internally at OpenAI before leaking on April 13.

What It Proves

Revenue recognition disputes between private AI companies are almost impossible to adjudicate without audited financials — which neither OpenAI nor Anthropic makes public. What the Dresser memo confirms is that OpenAI's executive team was conducting formal competitive intelligence on Anthropic's accounting practices and was prepared to weaponize it. In an industry where valuations are built almost entirely on run-rate projections, the specific $8B figure is a liability that Anthropic has yet to formally rebut.