OpenAI report causes stock market jitters

Oracle, Coreweave, SoftBank and Arm stocks all down

A report suggesting that OpenAI has missed some of its key targets has caused shares in companies with the largest stakes in AI’s most prominent player to drop.

The Wall Street Journal, quoting unnamed internal sources, reported that OpenAI failed to hit its internal goal of one billion weekly active users for ChatGPT by the end of 2025, and that it had missed its revenue targets.

Oracle’s shares finished 4.05% lower on Tuesday. The company is one of OpenAI’s biggest investors, having signed a five‑year $300 billon deal with the AI leader in 2025 for cloud and compute capacity. Since the start of the year, Oracle’s stock has dropped by more than 15%, as investors worry about how it will fund its datacentre commitments.

CoreWeave’s shares fell 5.79% on Tuesday. The datacentre provider - which has had a rollercoaster year and is up 47% since the beginning of January - is seen as something of a bellwether. A spokesperson insisted that the company is not tied to the fortunes of OpenAI, telling Yahoo Finance that it has an “expanding set of customers like Meta Platforms, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Perplexity AI, Jane Street, and many others”.

SoftBank (down 9.8% on Tuesday, up 19.7% year to date) is a major investor in OpenAI, with a $22.5 billion funding commitment. Reuters reported in December that the Japanese bank was planning to borrow some of those funds against its ownership of chip designer Arm (down 8% on Tuesday, up 73% on the year), which is also a major customer of OpenAI.

OpenAI, which is planning an IPO later this year, is facing increasing competition, particularly from Google. Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude have stolen some of the limelight from ChatGPT this year, and on Tuesday Google announced plans to invest up to $40 billon in Anthropic, which could mark the start of a major consolidation. Amazon has also committed $5 billion to Anthropic, with the option to invest up to $25 billion in total.

Microsoft, an early investor in OpenAI, is loosening its ties with the company, allowing OpenAI to make deals with other platforms. Microsoft appears to be moving its Copilot chatbot away from dependence on ChatGPT.

Despite concerns about circular financing and finite datacentre capacity, the AI boom has continued through 2026. While jitters over OpenAI may prove short‑lived, there are signs that a slowdown may be imminent. Datacentre builds are hitting physical limits and meeting local resistance, there are shortages of key components, and energy price shocks from the Iran war will inevitably have an impact.

Meanwhile, few AI startups are close to being profitable. Anthropic, which is effectively subsidising all its users, has been tightening usage limits during peak weekday hours due to growing demand across all user tiers and a shortage of compute.