OpenAI Misses Revenue and User Targets, Triggering the Biggest AI Stock Selloff in Months
A Wall Street Journal report published Sunday revealed that OpenAI has fallen short of multiple internal revenue and user growth targets in recent months — and the market’s reaction on Monday, April 28 was swift and broad. Oracle dropped more than 4%. SoftBank cratered 10% in Tokyo. Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD all declined between 3% and 4%. The Nasdaq Composite retreated from Friday’s record close as the entire AI infrastructure trade came under pressure.
The report raises a question that has been building for months: if the company at the center of the AI boom cannot hit its own targets, what does that mean for the hundreds of billions of dollars being committed to AI data centers, chips, and cloud capacity?
What the WSJ Reported
According to the Journal, OpenAI missed multiple monthly revenue targets earlier this year. The company has also fallen short of an internal goal to reach 1 billion weekly active users for ChatGPT by the end of 2025 — a benchmark that remains unmet as of early 2026.
The report cited growing competition from Anthropic, which has been gaining traction with corporate customers through its Claude models, and Google’s Gemini, which is increasingly being adopted as companies diversify their AI provider relationships.
Perhaps most concerning: CFO Sarah Friar reportedly warned colleagues that if revenue growth does not accelerate, OpenAI could face difficulty funding its future compute agreements. These agreements — including a $300 billion, five-year deal with Oracle and SoftBank for the Stargate data center project — represent some of the largest infrastructure commitments in corporate history.
OpenAI pushed back on the report. CEO Sam Altman and Friar said in a joint statement: “This is ridiculous. We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.”
Why the Market Reacted So Strongly
The selloff was not about OpenAI’s financial health in isolation. It was about what OpenAI’s struggles imply for the broader AI capex cycle.
The logic chain is straightforward:
- OpenAI is the largest consumer of AI compute
- Oracle, SoftBank, Nvidia, and others have made massive bets on continued demand growth
- If OpenAI cannot convert compute into proportional revenue, those bets look less certain
- Companies with the most direct exposure to OpenAI’s data center business — Oracle, CoreWeave, and SoftBank — suffered the steepest losses
Stocks most affected on April 28:
| Company | Decline | Exposure |
|---|---|---|
| SoftBank | -10% | $60B committed to OpenAI/Stargate |
| Oracle | -4.2% | $300B five-year cloud deal |
| CoreWeave | -6.8% | Major OpenAI compute provider |
| AMD | -3.5% | AI chip supplier |
| Nvidia | -3.1% | AI GPU dominant supplier |
| Broadcom | -3.4% | AI networking chips |
The Competition Factor
The WSJ report highlighted a shift that industry observers have been tracking: enterprise customers are increasingly adopting multi-model strategies rather than standardizing on OpenAI.
Anthropic’s Claude has gained significant ground in coding and enterprise applications. The company reportedly reached $2.4 billion in annualized revenue as of Q1 2026, up from roughly $900 million a year ago. Google’s Gemini models, distributed through Google Cloud, offer enterprises an alternative that integrates with existing Google Workspace deployments.
This dynamic is particularly relevant in the context of OpenAI’s restructured Microsoft partnership, announced the same day. With exclusivity gone, OpenAI can now distribute on AWS and GCP — but those same platforms already host competing models.
The IPO Question
OpenAI is widely expected to pursue an initial public offering, potentially as early as late 2026 or 2027. A revenue miss raises the stakes for any IPO roadshow, where investors will scrutinize growth rates, unit economics, and the gap between compute costs and revenue generation.
The company was last valued at $300 billion in its most recent private funding round. Sustaining that valuation in public markets requires demonstrating that AI infrastructure spending translates into durable, high-margin revenue — exactly the narrative that the WSJ report calls into question.
What Happens Next
The AI capex cycle is not over. Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet are all guiding to record-level capital expenditure in 2026, with combined spending approaching $660 billion. These companies are building AI infrastructure for their own products, not solely for OpenAI.
But the sentiment shift matters. If the market begins pricing in slower-than-expected AI monetization, the repricing could extend beyond pure-play AI infrastructure stocks to the hyperscalers themselves — particularly those reporting earnings this week.
Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft all report after the close on Tuesday. Their AI revenue disclosures and capex guidance will either confirm or challenge the narrative that the OpenAI miss triggered.