There were reports that the artificial intelligence company OpenAI failed to achieve its core goals of sales and user growth, and a number of artificial intelligence concept stocks fell sharply. The market once again has doubts: the hundreds of billions of dollars invested by major giants in the artificial intelligence field may not bring significant returns in the short term.
This negative report dragged down the stock prices of all companies that have reached investment cooperation and business cooperation with OpenAI. The advent of ChatGPT more than three years ago triggered a global artificial intelligence stock market craze, and OpenAI was the core promoter.
The stock prices of Oracle and CoreWeave, which have signed a cloud computing cooperation agreement with OpenAI, closed down 4.1% and 5.8% respectively; chip manufacturer AMD fell 3.4%, and Nvidia fell 1.6%, recording its worst single-day performance in the past month. The above two chip companies also have in-depth cooperation with OpenAI.
In recent months, technology giants such as Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Alphabet have continued to increase their artificial intelligence deployment, driving technology stocks higher; and the news that OpenAI's performance was lower than expected has once again awakened the market's long-term concerns. Although large-scale investment in AI has driven revenue growth for semiconductor, power, and data center companies, the market has always been concerned that once capital expenditures shrink and industry profits fall short of expectations, the technology sector may experience a sharp correction.
Previously, the situation in Iran triggered a general decline in the stock market, and related concerns were once shelved by the market. The Nasdaq 100 posted one of its strongest gains in more than a decade this month, rallying to a record high; but the index retreated about 1% on Tuesday. The semiconductor index, which had soared 47% from the end of March to last Friday, fell 3.6% in a single day. Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management, said: "The current market reaction is extremely extreme, and investors will always subconsciously price in worst-case or best-case scenarios."
Citing people familiar with the matter, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has warned senior executives that if revenue growth continues to be weak, the company may not be able to afford subsequent computing power procurement contracts. In response, an OpenAI spokesperson responded that the company is currently operating at full speed and efficiently, with strong demand from corporate customers and strong growth in emerging advertising businesses.
Judging from the recent market conditions, the decline in related stocks on Tuesday did not exceed the normal fluctuation range. However, as technology giants such as Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are about to release financial reports, each company will simultaneously disclose the progress of artificial intelligence implementation, and the impact of this bad news has attracted more attention. Joanne Feeney, portfolio manager at Advisors Capital Management, pointed out: "The market is always highly nervous, and the entire chip, data center, and software supply chain is deeply dependent on leading AI companies. Any disturbance will cause investors to pause and reassess potential risks."
Bloomberg Industry Research Analyst Anurag Rana analyzed that obstacles in the development of OpenAI may affect the entire AI infrastructure industry chain, among which Oracle's business goals and performance are at the highest risk. He added: "If OpenAI reduces its computing power procurement requirements, Microsoft, Amazon Cloud Technology, and CoreWeave will also be affected by the chain."
Although OpenAI had a first-mover advantage in the industry in the early days, competition on the track is now becoming increasingly fierce: the emerging company Anthropic is rapidly rising, and major technology giants are also developing their own AI and entering the market strongly. This also allows partner companies such as CoreWeave to diversify their customers and no longer rely solely on OpenAI.
A spokesperson for CoreWeave said in an email: "OpenAI is not our only partner." The company's business also relies on many leading customers such as Meta Platforms, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and Confused Artificial Intelligence.
Oracle responded that it is confident in the prospects of cooperation with OpenAI and is making every effort to build and deliver computing resources to meet the other party's explosive growth business needs.
AI bubble or dividend of the times?
OpenAI, which once led the global AI craze, has failed to meet multiple monthly sales targets in 2026, people familiar with the matter reported on Monday. The main competitor Anthropic is rapidly seizing the market in code development and enterprise services, directly squeezing its development space.
Last fall, Alphabet's Gemini large model and Anthropic's Claude model received widespread praise from the industry, completely reversing the market's perception of OpenAI as the industry leader. Competing product technology iterations continue to develop, triggering collective sell-offs in OpenAI-related concept stocks many times.
Tiffany Wade, senior portfolio manager of Columbia Global Investments, mentioned in an interview: "For a long time in the past, Google was regarded as a laggard in the AI track, and the performance of large models was not as good as OpenAI and Anthropic. But after the release of the new Gemini series of models last year, Google completely reversed the situation and became the first echelon of the industry." Wade believes that combined with the background of the sharp rise in technology stocks and semiconductor sectors in April, the capital market's response to OpenAI The reaction to the bad news is reasonable; but in the long term, the logic of rigid demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure has not wavered. She said: "AI demand is a rigid demand for the entire industry and the entire economy, and it is by no means only coming from Anthropic and OpenAI. The demand for computing power in the entire society continues to rise, and capital investment in related fields will also continue for a long time."