The OpenAI Revenue Scare Was Overblown. The AI Trade’s Real Risk Isn’t.

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OpenAI is expected to launch its initial public offering next year. (AFP via Getty Images)

Key Points

Chip, networking and cloud stocks fell after a report stated OpenAI’s annualized recurring revenue was $20 billion lower than previously signaled.
The $20 billion gap appears to be the difference between OpenAI’s gross revenue, which includes partner business, and its net annualized revenue.
Stocks that fell on Thursday, including Oracle and Broadcom, only recouped part of their losses in Friday’s trading.

Welcome to another round of ‘Bubble or Not.’ A brief panic about OpenAI’s revenue and the artificial-intelligence trade as a whole is already subsiding but the market got another warning about how much it depends on just two companies.

Chips, networking, and cloud-computing stocks all dropped Thursday after a Financial Times report stated that OpenAI’s annualized recurring revenue was $20 billion lower than previously signaled—a mere $50 billion rather than the previously reported $70 billion.

Cue panic. Is ChatGPT ‘washed’ or ‘cooked,’ as the kids say? Is the AI bubble popping? Have the past four years of market moves all been a massive mistake?

As it turns out, the explanation looks to be more innocent. Investors in OpenAI have been counting the business generated via its cloud-computing partners as part of its gross revenue, in an effort to make the numbers comparable with those reported by rival Anthropic. The $20 billion gap looks to be the difference between that figure and OpenAI’s net annualized revenue.

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Investors were only partially reassured. Stocks that were hit hard on Thursday such as CoreWeave , Oracle , Coherent , and Broadcom were only recouping part of their losses in Friday’s premarket.

News that Nvidia -backed cloud-computing firm Firmus has just canceled its plans to launch an initial public offering might be focusing minds on the risks of depending on two mega-IPOs in the form of OpenAI and Anthropic to justify the entire AI trade. Nvidia stock was rising 1.7% in premarket trading Friday.

Until Anthropic and OpenAI go public, a huge amount of market value is vulnerable to any leak or fragment of information that suggests AI spending might weaken—which means bubble concerns will never be far away.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com

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