OpenAI misses revenue targets

OpenAI missed internal targets for ChatGPT user growth and revenue, and the report hit AI-linked stocks on Tuesday. (cnbc.com) (forbes.com) The Wall Street Journal report, cited by CNBC and Forbes, said OpenAI missed a goal of 1 billion weekly active ChatGPT users by the end of 2025 and fell short of several monthly revenue targets in early 2026. (cnbc.com) (forbes.com) CNBC reported Oracle fell 4%, Broadcom 4%, Advanced Micro Devices 3%, Nvidia more than 1%, CoreWeave more than 5%, and SoftBank about 10% in Asia after the story landed. (cnbc.com) The market reaction centered on spending, not just sales. Oracle has a $300 billion, five-year partnership to supply computing power to OpenAI, and investors have been testing whether AI demand can keep up with data-center buildouts. (cnbc.com) Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer, reportedly warned colleagues that slower revenue growth could make it harder to fund future compute agreements. Forbes said she also raised concerns about whether OpenAI could meet public-company reporting standards on an aggressive initial public offering timeline. (cnbc.com) (forbes.com) OpenAI pushed back on the report. A spokesperson told CNBC the account was “ridiculous,” and told Forbes the business was “firing on all cylinders.” (cnbc.com) (forbes.com) The miss landed two months after CNBC reported OpenAI had reset its compute spending target to about $600 billion by 2030, down from an earlier $1.4 trillion figure. That same February report said OpenAI generated $13.1 billion in 2025 revenue, above a $10 billion target, and was projecting more than $280 billion in 2030 revenue. (cnbc.com) That earlier CNBC report also said ChatGPT had climbed to more than 900 million weekly active users after a fall slowdown and a December “code red” push against competition from Google and Anthropic. Tuesday’s report suggested that rebound did not erase investor concern about the pace of monetization. (cnbc.com 1) (cnbc.com 2) Axios reported private-market AI investors were still broadly bullish despite the public-stock sell-off, arguing the race between OpenAI and Anthropic is still in early stages. The immediate question is whether OpenAI can turn usage into enough revenue to support the compute it keeps buying. (axios.com)