AI firms’ earnings power is reshaping comparisons to legacy consumer brands, new report says

A new report framed artificial intelligence as the latest sector to displace traditional “barbell” symbols of global corporate success. In a comparison circulated by Yahoo Finance, OpenAI and Anthropic were said to be earning more than Starbucks and McDonald’s, two companies long viewed as durable consumer benchmarks.

The framing matters because McDonald’s and Starbucks are typically used as shorthand for mature, high-volume business models: standardized products, global real estate or franchised footprints, and steady, repeatable demand. When an article places AI companies alongside them in an “earnings” comparison, it indicates that analysts are increasingly evaluating AI players with the same yardstick used for retail and branded consumer companies, even when those AI firms are structured differently and operate on different cost and revenue models.

The report’s central claim is straightforward but specific: it asserts that OpenAI and Anthropic have moved ahead of Starbucks and McDonald’s on earnings. However, the information available for this story does not include the underlying methodology, the exact earnings period, the accounting measure used (for example, net income versus operating profit), or the currency and consolidation approach applied to each company. As a result, the comparison should be read as a headline-level argument rather than a fully auditable earnings ranking.

McDonald’s, whose shares trade under the ticker MCD, did not disclose any new earnings commentary in the material provided for this story. The comparison instead appears to rely on public financial results and earnings-related metrics associated with each company and then ranks them against each other. Without access to the report’s calculations, it is not possible to confirm how each firm’s earnings were defined or whether differences in accounting, ownership structure, or reporting standards affected the conclusion.

For consumer brands, the broader point is not that a burger chain or coffee retailer is suddenly comparable to a model developer in how they serve customers. The more relevant shift is that AI is increasingly seen as an enterprise platform with direct revenue pathways, whether through partnerships, cloud-based access, enterprise contracts, or usage-driven offerings. That perception can influence how investors and analysts value “future cash flow” and how quickly they rotate attention away from legacy growth narratives.

Starbucks and McDonald’s also share a key feature with many retail franchises and operators, namely, that earnings power is closely tied to consumer spending cycles, labor costs, input prices, and store-level execution. AI companies face different cost structures, but their earnings trajectory can also be affected by product demand and distribution. The report’s comparison therefore underscores that the market’s earnings expectations are no longer limited to traditional consumer categories.

What remains unclear from the available material is the timeframe and whether the comparison uses trailing twelve months, a particular quarter, or another averaging method. It also does not specify whether the comparison is based on publicly reported financial statements for all firms, or whether some AI companies’ financials are treated differently because they are not reported in the same way as public consumer brands.

The next thing to watch is whether other analysts publish similarly structured comparisons and whether AI companies’ monetization continues to translate into reported earnings in a way that holds up under consistent methodology. For McDonald’s, investors will likely keep focusing on restaurant economics and guidance, but the competitive backdrop for “earnings leadership” in headlines may increasingly include AI as much as consumer retail.