Shares of Oracle Corporation fell about 5% in premarket trading after a Wall Street Journal report highlighted growth challenges at OpenAI, one of its largest customers. The development raised concerns about the cloud giant's long-term revenue visibility, particularly regarding a massive $300 billion, five-year cloud agreement announced last year.
The report indicated that OpenAI missed its internal target of reaching 1 billion weekly active users by the end of 2025. Additionally, the company fell short of multiple monthly revenue targets earlier in 2026, facing increased competition from rivals like Anthropic. Data showed ChatGPT's share of generative AI web traffic dropped from 86.7% a year earlier to 64.5% in January 2026, while Google's Gemini rose sharply from 5.7% to 21.5%.
Internally, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar expressed concerns about the company's ability to meet future computing contract obligations if revenue growth does not accelerate. OpenAI has locked in roughly $600 billion in future data-center spending. This has triggered fresh scrutiny from investors regarding Oracle's significant exposure to a single customer.
The impact extended to Tokyo, where SoftBank Group, now a 13% owner of OpenAI, saw its shares plunge 9.9%. AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave also fell by 3.5%.
Analyst views are divided. George Noble, a hedge fund veteran, warned that Oracle's AI push could be built on fragile foundations, citing off-balance-sheet project financing. However, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities reiterated a positive stance, arguing the market is misinterpreting Oracle's heavy capital expenditure as a risk rather than a strategic shift. He described Oracle's transformation into a foundational AI infrastructure provider as being in its 'early innings.'
Experts remain split on whether the stumbles signal a broader AI market correction or a temporary recalibration. Alice Li, Investment Partner at Foresight Ventures, views the current pressure as an internal rebalancing within the tech sector. Markus Levin, co-founder of XYO, noted that by end of 2025, roughly 84% of the world's working-age population had still not used generative AI tools, suggesting the adoption curve is slow but not indicative of a market crash.
