By Jared Mitovich and Bradley Olson
AI jitters are back on Wall Street.
Shares of Oracle, CoreWeave, SoftBank and other firms tied to OpenAI slumped on Tuesday, with those three all dropping at least 4% after The Wall Street Journal reported that the ChatGPT maker had missed its own targets for revenue and users. That revived investors' worries that technology giants' massive investment in artificial intelligence won't produce the blockbuster profits many expect.
The report was particularly jarring coming just ahead of key earnings from major AI players due this week. Alphabet, Amazon.com, Microsoft and Meta Platforms are all scheduled to report Wednesday, with Apple following close behind on Thursday, a run that many expect to test a rally that has helped carry major indexes to recent records.
Tuesday's declines weighed on the Nasdaq composite, dragging the tech-heavy index back 0.9% from a record hit the prior session. Tech shares were the biggest decliners in the S&P 500, with the sector falling 1.3%.
"The ice is really thin. The leash is very tight," said Dan Morgan, portfolio manager and analyst at Synovus Trust, which owns shares of OpenAI partners like Oracle, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices. "Any evidence that would come out that would add to doubt about OpenAI, Anthropic, or any of these companies is obviously going to create a selloff."
Morgan said he hadn't adjusted his positions on Tuesday and didn't think investors' concern was broad-based, because companies including IBM, Texas Instruments and Intel had reported strong earnings in recent days.
Instead, Tuesday's losses centered around the companies with the biggest stakes in OpenAI's business. OpenAI has forged close ties with companies to secure funding and gain access to computing resources, which are essential for training AI systems and providing answers to queries and executing user requests. It has built a roster of corporate relationships from BNY Mellon to Target.
Oracle, Nvidia and SoftBank are among OpenAI's closest partners, and some investors have come to see them as part of the AI leader's ecosystem. Oracle has faced challenges in financing an OpenAI-linked data-center build-out. Nvidia is one of OpenAI's biggest financial backers and has provided the processors used throughout much of OpenAI's rise. SoftBank has also been a central financier.
Shares of Oracle lost 4%. CoreWeave, a top cloud-computing partner, fell 5.8%. SoftBank, which has committed more than $60 billion to OpenAI, fell more than 9% in trading in Tokyo -- its worst one-day performance since November. Nvidia slid 1.6%, while Broadcom and AMD each dropped more than 3%.
In some cases, OpenAI critics have said certain financing arrangements are circular in nature, with the company's partners providing funding and the company spending money on computing with that partner.
OpenAI has defended its financial footing and said its leaders are aligned on securing computing resources.
"The business is firing on all cylinders and the mood internally is incredibly positive," the company said in response to the Journal's article Tuesday.
OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman reached deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars late last year to line up computing resources, many of which failed to materialize as originally planned. Broad market sentiment on the startup, once almost uniformly positive, began souring late last year.
The company has since moved to focus more directly on coding and enterprise customers, dropping what one executive called "side projects" and launching ChatGPT 5.5, a model that has won accolades from many power users.
Tech companies with less direct ties to OpenAI performed better on Tuesday. Microsoft ticked up 1%, while Apple gained 1.2%. Software firms Adobe, Salesforce and ServiceNow all rose, a sign that the worries haven't spread to other areas of the market where AI has sparked volatility in recent months.
And Tuesday's declines were relatively narrow. Energy stocks in the S&P 500 gained 1.7%, lifted by Brent crude's climb to $111.26, its highest close since the U.S.-Iran cease-fire. Consumer staples rose 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost less than 0.1%, buoyed by a 3.9% climb from Coca-Cola -- its biggest one-day gain since October -- after the company reported earnings that beat Wall Street expectations.
Citi analyst Heath Terry, hired by the bank last year to cover private tech firms, said he had fielded questions from clients on Tuesday about the implications of OpenAI's missed targets on the broader AI ecosystem.
"It's largely related to that $1.5 trillion number," Terry said, referring to a figure some OpenAI executives have used to describe the cost of its AI infrastructure needs. "When you put a number like that out there for a company in OpenAI's stage, investors are going to focus on the risk and what can go wrong." Lately, the startup has cited a smaller figure of around $600 billion.
Alex Shahidi, co-chief investment officer at Evoke Advisors, said the circularity of OpenAI's deals complicated the picture for markets. "But ultimately it's revenues," he said. "You have to make a profit at some point."
Meanwhile, even strong results risk disappointing investors.
"The bar is just so high," Shahidi said. "At some point you're not going to exceed those lofty expectations. It seems like we're starting to approach that point."
Write to Jared Mitovich at jared.mitovich@wsj.com and Bradley Olson at bradley.olson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 28, 2026 16:55 ET (20:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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