OpenAI missed its own projections for revenue and user growth, and the selloff was immediate. Oracle dropped more than 4%. Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD each fell 3-4%. CoreWeave sank 5%. SoftBank, one of OpenAI's biggest backers, slid 10% in Asian trading. The Wall Street Journal report that triggered the rout cited internal concerns about whether OpenAI can keep funding its massive data center buildout, with finance chief Sarah Friar reportedly warning colleagues that revenue growth needs to accelerate to cover future compute agreements.
What matters here goes beyond a missed quarterly target. OpenAI locked in massive GPU capacity deals with providers like Oracle and CoreWeave through take-or-pay contracts. They pay for compute whether they use it or not. CoreWeave used those contracts as collateral to borrow over $6 billion from lenders including Blackstone and Magnetar. OpenAI's still on the hook for the capacity. The infrastructure companies that built their debt structures around those payments are exposed too.
OpenAI called the WSJ report ridiculous. Some analysts agree it's overblown. Jordan Klein at Mizuho noted that OpenAI recently closed a large funding round at a premium valuation, so any slowdown would have been visible to investors already. John Belton at Gabelli Funds said the article confirms what was already known: OpenAI lost some market share to Anthropic and Google's Gemini models in late 2025 and early 2026.
The competitive pressure is real. Enterprise AI customers aren't locking in with a single provider anymore. Anthropic keeps winning corporate deals. Google's Gemini models are gaining traction. The bills for all that GPU capacity are coming due, and growth needs to keep pace, and AI now costs more than the humans it replaces.