OpenAI misses revenue targets, investors

OpenAI missed internal revenue and user-growth targets in recent months, according to a Wall Street Journal report that rattled investors on April 28. (reuters.com) Reuters reported that Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar warned colleagues OpenAI could struggle to pay for future computing contracts if revenue growth does not accelerate. OpenAI and Friar disputed that account in a joint statement. (reuters.com) (cnbc.com) The Journal report said ChatGPT also missed an internal goal of reaching one billion weekly active users by the end of 2025. It said OpenAI fell short of several monthly revenue targets earlier in 2026 after losing ground to Anthropic in coding and enterprise markets. (reuters.com) (finance.yahoo.com) The numbers matter because OpenAI has tied itself to enormous computing commitments as it races to build and run larger artificial intelligence systems. CNBC reported Oracle alone has a $300 billion, five-year partnership to supply computing power for OpenAI operations. (cnbc.com) Those contracts sit at the center of a broader debate inside the company over how fast OpenAI should spend and how soon it should try to go public. Reuters and CNBC both reported that Friar has raised concerns about financing and public-company readiness, while Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has pushed an aggressive expansion plan. (reuters.com) (cnbc.com) OpenAI publicly pushed back. Altman and Friar told CNBC they were “totally aligned” on buying as much compute as possible, and Oracle said demand for OpenAI’s technology is still growing quickly. (cnbc.com) Markets still treated the report as a warning about the economics of the artificial intelligence build-out. CNBC said Oracle fell 4%, Broadcom 4%, Advanced Micro Devices 3%, Nvidia more than 1%, CoreWeave more than 5%, and SoftBank about 10% in Asia. (cnbc.com) The selloff landed just weeks after OpenAI closed a $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion post-money valuation, according to CNBC and Yahoo Finance. That gap between private-market enthusiasm and missed internal targets is now the pressure point investors are watching. (cnbc.com) (finance.yahoo.com) For now, the immediate question is not whether OpenAI remains central to the artificial intelligence market. It is whether growth can catch up fast enough to support the company’s spending promises before any public listing. (reuters.com) (cnbc.com)