OpenAI's revenue fell $20 billion short of expectations. Tech stocks fell
The Nasdaq 100 technology index fell 1.7%
The discrepancy in revenue estimates stemmed from investors' attempts to compare OpenAI's and Anthropic's methods of calculating sales, explains the FT / Photo: Koshiro K / Shutterstock.com
OpenAI’s annualized revenue is approximately $20 billion lower than the market had expected, according to financial documents provided to investors, the Financial Times reports. Such a significant discrepancy is likely to dampen optimism about the pace of growth in demand for artificial intelligence, the publication notes. Following the FT’s report, shares of cloud computing providers with contracts with OpenAI fell. The Nasdaq 100 technology index lost 1.7%.
Details
OpenAI told investors that, as of the end of September, its annualized revenue was close to $50 billion. This is significantly less than the $70 billion reported by the Financial Times and other media outlets at the end of last month.
This metric, like a similar one from OpenAI’s competitor, Anthropic, is considered a key indicator of overall demand for AI. Large-scale investments in infrastructure and stock market growth are largely based on it, the FT explains.
Shares of OpenAI’s cloud computing providers plummeted following the FT report. Oracle’s shares fell more than 6% at one point, while Microsoft’s dropped 2%. Shares of Nvidia, which supplies OpenAI with chips and has invested in the company, lost 2.9%. Shares of other AI-related companies, including CoreWeave and Nebius, also fell significantly. Memory manufacturer Micron lost 4% of its market capitalization. The Nasdaq 100 tech index fell 1.7%.
Why did revenue fall short of expectations?
According to an FT source, the discrepancy in OpenAI’s sales figures stemmed from investors’ attempts to directly compare its annualized revenue with that of its competitor, Anthropic. The two companies calculate sales differently: Anthropic includes revenue from sales through cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud, whereas OpenAI does not.
Attempts to recalculate OpenAI’s metric to account for these differences and make it comparable to Anthropic’s metric led to reports that the company’s annualized revenue reached $40 billion in August. OpenAI subsequently told investors that its revenue had grown by more than 70%, which is where the $70 billion valuation came from. However, a new presentation to investors suggests that OpenAI’s annualized revenue in July was around $30 billion, according to the FT.
Since OpenAI is a private company, it is not required to regularly disclose its financial statements to the public. OpenAI declined to comment to the FT.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
