Shares of companies tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure tumbled in early trading Tuesday after a report that OpenAI has fallen short of internal growth expectations, raising fresh questions about whether the pace of spending across the sector is sustainable.
Oracle dropped about 7.5% in premarket trading Tuesday. Oracle has a $300 billion, five-year partnership to supply computing power to OpenAI for AI operations.
Chipmakers including Nvidia, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices declined between roughly 2% and 5%.
Qualcomm pulled back 3.5%. The stock had gotten a slight boost Monday on reports it is working with OpenAI on smartphone chips tied to the firm’s hardware ambitions. Leveraged neocloud stock CoreWeave dropped 7%.
In Asia, SoftBank Group, one of OpenAI’s largest investors, sank about 10%.
The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI has recently missed its own projections for user growth and revenue. The shortfall has sparked internal concern about whether the company can keep pace with the massive financial commitments required to build out data centers and secure long-term computing capacity.
According to the report, finance chief Sarah Friar has warned colleagues that if revenue growth doesn’t accelerate, the company could face difficulty funding future compute agreements.
The WSJ report “raises questions about whether the firm can fulfill its massive infrastructure obligations,” said trader Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge in a morning note.
The report is fueling concerns that companies selling into the AI buildout, from data-center operators to chip designers, may be priced for growth that proves difficult to sustain if demand from key customers like OpenAI cools.
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