What happened to OpenAI’s $20bn? Revenue scare rattles AI trade

In a potential setback for OpenAI, the AI company's revenue scare has rattled investor confidence in the artificial intelligence boom, causing a decline in Wall Street trading on Friday morning. OpenAI's annualized revenue, which projects recent sales over a full year, was reported to be nearing $50 billion at the end of September, according to figures shared with investors.

However, this is about $20 billion less than the company had projected last month, leading to a drop in tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. The discrepancy does not indicate a loss in sales for OpenAI, but rather a difference in accounting methods used by rival Anthropic, which counts customers' spending on its AI models as revenue.

OpenAI's $70 billion estimate is not a company forecast but rather a recalculated figure based on a different approach. The news has affected firms that have invested heavily in OpenAI, such as Oracle, CoreWeave, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta, all of which are hyperscalers pouring money into AI data centers. Yet, despite the negative news, signals suggest that demand for AI hardware remains strong, with companies like Samsung and Taiwan's TSMC reporting record profits and sales.