Shares of Oracle (ORCL) fell 6% on October 8, closing near $135, after CNBC reported that OpenAI’s annualized revenue at the end of September was roughly $50 billion — far below the $68 billion to $70 billion run-rate figures that had circulated only weeks earlier. The stock remains 57% below its 52-week high of $313 from October 2025 and is down 31% year-to-date.
The gap was not evidence of weakening demand, but of accounting differences. According to people familiar with the matter, the earlier higher number included gross revenue from OpenAI’s partners, making it easier to compare against rival Anthropic. Anthropic includes certain sales made through Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud in its reported revenue, while OpenAI records only its share of comparable transactions. OpenAI is reportedly using the $50 billion figure in an investor presentation tied to its push to justify an $852 billion valuation, and it is eyeing a 2027 IPO.
The news rippled across AI-linked equities. Nvidia dropped 2.9%, AMD fell 3.9%, Micron Technology lost 4.8%, and Broadcom declined 4.3%, while the Nasdaq 100 retreated as investors questioned whether AI infrastructure spending was growing faster than the revenue supporting it. Rising bond yields added pressure, particularly for growth-heavy tech names. Oracle's proposed compute relationship with OpenAI has made it especially sensitive to the AI revenue narrative; Nvidia has explored an OpenAI infrastructure partnership involving potential investments of up to $100 billion, while AMD is expanding its AI chip business through agreements with major technology companies.
Oracle also faces operational headwinds: it has had to truck in natural gas for data center projects in Salt Lake City and Texas because of pipeline delays, and it has declared force majeure on some of those delays. The company still holds a large backlog of committed cloud customers, but data center buildouts are costly, and Oracle carries a sizable debt load. With a market cap of about $437.7 billion and average trading volume near 31.5 million shares, Oracle remains volatile — it has moved more than 5% in a single session 36 times over the past year.
