AI Stocks Fall After FT Reports OpenAI Revenue Below Earlier Figure

AI-linked US stocks fell on Thursday after the Financial Times reported that OpenAI’s annualised revenue is far lower than it had signalled to investors. Annualised revenue is the current run-rate scaled up to a full year; OpenAI is the private developer behind ChatGPT.

The FT said OpenAI told investors it was approaching $50bn toward the end of September, citing financial documents. Information shared last month had indicated about $70bn, a gap of roughly $20bn. The $50bn figure has been confirmed, against the $68bn widely reported late last month.

The FT cited a person familiar with the matter who said the discrepancy came from OpenAI’s effort to produce a figure comparable with rival Anthropic. A person familiar told CNBC the $68bn included gross revenue from OpenAI’s partners, meaning revenue before sharing it with them. OpenAI declined to comment to the FT.

At about 13:40 New York time on Thursday, with the US session still open, Celestica was down 5.9% intraday and Oracle was down 4.9% at $136.50. Nvidia and CoreWeave also fell, and the Nasdaq Composite hit its lowest level of the session after the report.

Broadcom is the chipmaker working with OpenAI on a custom chip. Microsoft was down 1.2% and Dell Technologies 0.8% at the same time intraday.

The figure carries extra weight because investors expect Anthropic to go public around November, followed by OpenAI next year.

For UK traders holding US AI stocks, or funds and trackers with AI exposure, the move points to how sensitive the AI spending trade is to OpenAI’s revenue numbers. These moves are intraday and may change before the US close.