OpenAI Revenue Comes In $20 Billion Short of Reported Figure, Triggering AI Stock Selloff

OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, roughly $20 billion below the $70 billion figure widely reported just weeks earlier, according to the Financial Times. The discrepancy stems from a methodological difference: Anthropic counts revenue flowing through cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not. Investors had tried to make the two companies comparable by adjusting OpenAI's figures upward, producing the inflated $70 billion estimate that circulated last month. OpenAI declined to comment.

The revision hit AI-linked equities immediately. The Nasdaq dropped more than 300 points, falling roughly 0.6 percent to 27,372, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.39 percent to 7,771. Oracle fell nearly 6 percent given its reported $300 billion cloud contract with OpenAI, and Nvidia, CoreWeave and other AI infrastructure names also sank. The selloff deepened concerns already circulating through markets about the sustainability of AI spending, with Goldman Sachs separately warning that rising infrastructure costs are creating a cost-of-capital problem for the sector, and Panmure Liberum strategist Joachim Klement projecting a 36 percent base-case downside for the S&P 500 to 5,000 points if the AI trade unravels by 2027 or 2028.

The revenue news landed on a day crowded with AI financing headlines. SpaceX is reportedly raising around $40 billion in debt to purchase Nvidia chips, and Broadcom held early talks about financing for OpenAI chips, joining Oracle in what ZeroHedge described as an AI chip-debt SPV stampede. A Financial Times analysis flagged that AI agents shifting idle bank deposits into higher-yielding products could cost U.S. banks roughly $500 billion, with major bank earnings beginning the following Tuesday. Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz said at the Greenwich Economic Forum that AI is in the "biggest bubble of our lifetime" but urged investors to stay in, noting AI stocks still look cheap on a price-to-earnings basis and that staying out puts fund managers at a severe competitive disadvantage.

Anthropically, the competitive picture also shifted. Polymarket odds show Google now leads the race for best AI model at year-end with a 43 percent probability, up sharply from roughly 10 percent in late September after the launch of Gemini 4 Argon, while Anthropic slipped to 41 percent from 52 percent on October 1. Anthropic separately announced plans to spend $518 billion on cloud and computing over the next decade and committed $150 million to U.S. federal AI research under the Genesis Mission, ahead of an expected November IPO. Google Cloud unveiled persistent Gemini agents capable of running for days with their own email, calendar and Drive storage.

At a White House science summit, President Trump awarded the National Medal of Science to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell. Trump announced $2.4 billion in AI research pledges from tech companies, signed an order targeting a quantum computer for scientific discovery by 2028, and committed to four small modular reactors already started this year. Separately, Trump disclosed up to $1.6 million in Nvidia stock trades from August, the same month he bought as much as $25 million of Meta. Vice President JD Vance simultaneously announced the suspension of Microsoft, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini from the PERM green card program, alleging the H-1B visa system is "rife with fraud."

Trump also declared on Truth Social that the U.S. will not attack Iran before the November 3 midterm elections, citing "productive discussions" with Tehran while insisting the blockade remains in force. Oil fell sharply on the announcement, with Brent pulling back from above $105 before partially recovering. Israeli officials separately warned the IDF chief that a U.S. strike within three weeks could trigger heavy Iranian missile retaliation and force Israel to postpone its October 27 election. Trump also continued his push to replace the term artificial intelligence with "super intelligence," calling anyone who refuses "THE ENEMY," while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos echoed the sentiment, saying the word "artificial" carries negative connotations. Nvidia announced a separate $1 billion, five-year commitment to U.S. scientific research spanning quantum computing, healthcare and energy security.