OpenAI Revenue $20B Below Previous Reports, ORCL, NVDA Tumble

AI stocks fell Thursday as new figures put OpenAI’s annualized revenue roughly $20 billion below previous reports, raising questions about the sector’s growth. The ChatGPT maker told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, rather than the $70 billion previously reported, the Financial Times reported Thursday. Annualized revenue projects the current pace of sales over a full year. The discrepancy does not mean OpenAI lost $20 billion in sales. It reflects differences in how investors calculated its revenue. AI Stocks Fall Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz pointed to the market reaction as evidence of how dependent the technology sector has become on OpenAI and rival Anthropic. She highlighted a drop of more than 5% in Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL), alongside losses in Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT). The Nasdaq was down 1.4% in afternoon trading, with Barron’s linking the decline partly to the OpenAI report. Rising oil prices and Treasury yields also pressured stocks. Why the Numbers Differ The confusion began when investors adjusted OpenAI’s revenue upward to make it comparable with Anthropic’s, which includes the full value of sales through cloud partners, the FT said. Those adjustments led to reports that OpenAI had reached $40 billion in annualized revenue in August. When OpenAI subsequently told investors its revenue had grown more than 70%, the higher starting figure helped produce reports of approximately $70 billion, according to the FT. OpenAI’s own figures put annualized revenue closer to $50 billion. OpenAI declined to comment to the FT. The $1.4 Trillion Valuation Question OpenAI is seeking fresh funding of at least $30 billion at a reported $1.4 trillion valuation. That represents roughly 28 times its newly reported annualized revenue, compared with 20 times the previous figure, although the two estimates are not directly comparable. Meanwhile, Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) has been working to arrange more than $50 billion in financing for custom chips developed with OpenAI, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. What Prediction Traders Expect OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has ruled out a 2026 IPO, leaving 2027 as a possible listing date. On Polymarket, traders assigned roughly 58% odds to OpenAI going public by the end of 2027 and closing its first trading day with a market capitalization of at least $1.5 trillion, above its proposed $1.4 trillion private valuation. The $1.5 trillion-plus outcome has fallen from around 80% in September, while the probability of no IPO by the end of 2027 has climbed to approximately 23%. Image: Shutterstock Read Also: TSMC Plans Up to $64 Billion in Capex and Still Isn’t ‘Building Enough,’ Says Applied Materials Veteran