Technology stocks suffer after WSJ reports that OpenAI has missed key revenue and user targets
It was once a blessing to be associated with the world’s hottest startup.
Supplying chips, general data center hardware, or even just announcing a tangential partnership with the ChatGPT maker used to be enough to send a stock spiking. But those days are gone, with OpenAI once again weighing on a raft of its suppliers and partners after The Wall Street Journal reported that the company has missed a number of internal revenue and user targets, as its competition with Anthropic and others heats up.
As of 6:45 a.m. ET, CoreWeave is off 5.4%, Oracle is down 5.5%, and Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom are off roughly 4%. Nvidia, for its part, is the worst-performing Magnificent 7 component. With billions of dollars’ — and in some cases tens of billions of dollars’ — worth of contracts with each of those companies, any sign that OpenAI is struggling to reach the escape velocity that its remarkable “spend big to win big” strategy is based on is understandably seen as a negative. Even stocks less explicitly tied to OpenAI are under pressure — the company’s sheer size is enough to weigh on pretty much the entire AI ecosystem.
The pain isn’t contained to OpenAI’s high-profile partners, but is also infecting most of the AI trade. Other data center stocks like IREN, Nebius, Applied Digital, and Cipher Digital are down sharply in premarket trading, as are networking and chip stocks like Marvell Technology, Astera Labs, Applied Optoelectronics, Lumentum, and Coherent. These stocks had been on fire as of late amid myriad signs of intense end user demand for AI compute — many of which came from Anthropic — and now seem to be getting speed-checked thanks to this lackluster news from its rival.
Per the WSJ, Sarah Friar, the company’s CFO, has “told other company leaders that she is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn’t grow fast enough.”
The goals missed reportedly include:
A target to hit 1 billion weekly active users by the end of 2025.
Its annual revenue target for ChatGPT last year.
Multiple monthly revenue targets this year, as Anthropic has surged ahead in the enterprise markets.
Though some investors might be spooked, for what it’s worth, those missed targets haven’t exactly dampened the investor enthusiasm too much; the company recently announced that it had raised $122 billion, valuing it an eye-watering $852 billion.
It’s already been a busy week for OpenAI. Yesterday, the company announced a revised agreement with Microsoft, while CEO Sam Altman sent out a memo in which he mentioned “a lot of the things that we do that look weird — buying huge amounts of compute while our revenue is relatively small...”
This morning, the markets are deciding that kind of weird is worse than it was yesterday, in light of the missed targets.
Of course, the idea that OpenAI was limping into 2026 in light of competitive pressures from Google and Anthropic isn’t exactly new news. For instance, Altman reportedly called for a “code red” to improve ChatGPT in late 2025. OpenAI has spent 2026 championing its codex tool and its higher availability of compute — two things the company hopes will drive revenues going forward, especially from corporate customers.
As of 6:45 a.m. ET, CoreWeave is off 5.4%, Oracle is down 5.5%, and Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom are off roughly 4%. Nvidia, for its part, is the worst-performing Magnificent 7 component. With billions of dollars’ — and in some cases tens of billions of dollars’ — worth of contracts with each of those companies, any sign that OpenAI is struggling to reach the escape velocity that its remarkable “spend big to win big” strategy is based on is understandably seen as a negative. Even stocks less explicitly tied to OpenAI are under pressure — the company’s sheer size is enough to weigh on pretty much the entire AI ecosystem.
The pain isn’t contained to OpenAI’s high-profile partners, but is also infecting most of the AI trade. Other data center stocks like IREN, Nebius, Applied Digital, and Cipher Digital are down sharply in premarket trading, as are networking and chip stocks like Marvell Technology, Astera Labs, Applied Optoelectronics, Lumentum, and Coherent. These stocks had been on fire as of late amid myriad signs of intense end user demand for AI compute — many of which came from Anthropic — and now seem to be getting speed-checked thanks to this lackluster news from its rival.
Per the WSJ, Sarah Friar, the company’s CFO, has “told other company leaders that she is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn’t grow fast enough.”
The goals missed reportedly include:
A target to hit 1 billion weekly active users by the end of 2025.
Its annual revenue target for ChatGPT last year.
Multiple monthly revenue targets this year, as Anthropic has surged ahead in the enterprise markets.
Though some investors might be spooked, for what it’s worth, those missed targets haven’t exactly dampened the investor enthusiasm too much; the company recently announced that it had raised $122 billion, valuing it an eye-watering $852 billion.
It’s already been a busy week for OpenAI. Yesterday, the company announced a revised agreement with Microsoft, while CEO Sam Altman sent out a memo in which he mentioned “a lot of the things that we do that look weird — buying huge amounts of compute while our revenue is relatively small...”
This morning, the markets are deciding that kind of weird is worse than it was yesterday, in light of the missed targets.
Of course, the idea that OpenAI was limping into 2026 in light of competitive pressures from Google and Anthropic isn’t exactly new news. For instance, Altman reportedly called for a “code red” to improve ChatGPT in late 2025. OpenAI has spent 2026 championing its codex tool and its higher availability of compute — two things the company hopes will drive revenues going forward, especially from corporate customers.
