🤖 Tech Stocks Slide After OpenAI Misses Revenue Targets

📉 Tech Stocks Slide After OpenAI Misses Revenue Targets

⚖️ The Trial Over Who Controls AI

📍 6 AI Stock Sectors

🛠️ 5 Trending Tools

🥪 4 Brief Bites

💰 3 Funding Frontlines

💼 4 Job Opportunities

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar revealed that OpenAI missed key internal revenue targets and expected user growth benchmarks, raising concerns that OpenAI may not be able to meet the payment obligations it made when negotiating strategic AI infrastructure agreements with AMD, NVIDIA, Broadcom Inc., Oracle Corp., and CoreWeave, Inc.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has committed to spending approximately $600 billion on AI infrastructure by 2030, despite only generating around $25 billion in annualized revenue as of February 2026. It’s a major red flag because the payment obligations outpace the revenue growth, meaning OpenAI may need to raise more capital, scale back spending commitments, or roll out new monetization methods.

The expected user growth benchmarks included multiple monthly milestones, all aimed at reaching 1 billion weekly active ChatGPT users by the end of 2025. For context, OpenAI fell short by 200 million weekly active ChatGPT users.

Friar explained that available compute directly correlates with revenue growth. In other words, when compute grew by 9.5x from 2023 to 2025, revenue also grew by 10x from 2023 to 2025. This dynamic creates a classic “chicken-and-egg” problem: OpenAI’s revenue growth depends on acquiring more compute, but acquiring more compute requires upfront capital, which relies on investor confidence in future revenue growth.

OpenAI was reportedly preparing to pursue an IPO in the second half of 2026 that would value the ChatGPT maker at “up to $1 trillion,” solidifying it as the 12th most valuable publicly traded company on the planet. But now, it’s not such a sure thing.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in December 2015 as a non-profit research lab, with the goal of advancing digital intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Musk publicly stated that he left OpenAI in February 2018 due to competing priorities with Tesla, since Tesla was becoming more focused on AI & Robotics.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman strongly maintains that Musk left over disagreements of control and structure, demanding full executive authority and proposing a profit-driven, Tesla-linked venture. When his demands were denied, Musk said OpenAI had a “0% chance” of success.

OpenAI was originally founded as a non-profit organization before adding a for-profit arm called OpenAI LP in March 2019. OpenAI LP allowed investors a capped return if OpenAI succeeded. However, any money made beyond that capped return was funneled back into the non-profit organization.

When OpenAI raised a $40 billion Series F funding round at a $300 billion post-money valuation in March 2025, SoftBank Group Inc.’s $30 billion investment was contingent on OpenAI restructuring the for-profit arm into a Delaware PBC because it removed the capped return limitation.

OpenAI successfully restructured the for-profit arm into OpenAI Group PBC in October 2025, marking a major shift towards a more traditional corporate structure while maintaining a non-profit entity at the helm. This more traditional corporate structure is worth roughly $135 billion today.

Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019 in exchange for 20% of OpenAI’s revenue until 2030. Under the multi-billion-dollar partnership, OpenAI couldn’t simply convert into OpenAI Group PBC without Microsoft’s approval. After heated negotiations, Microsoft now holds a 27% equity stake in OpenAI, with OpenAI pledging to purchase $250 billion of Microsoft Azure services.

“It’s not ok to steal a charity,” said Musk. “If OpenAI wins, it would give license to looting every charity in America.” In other words, he’s confused how the heck OpenAI legally pulled off this profit-seeking transition within five years while actively benefiting from the non-profit organization’s tax-exempt status and becoming closed-source.

He’s seeking more than $150 billion in monetary damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, with any recovery going to OpenAI’s charitable arm rather than to him personally, along with a rollback of OpenAI’s for-profit status and major executive leadership changes.

Clarasight raised an $11.5M Series A to bring AI to enterprise travel.

Actively closed a $45M Series B to scale intelligence-led revenue.

Quantum Art landed a $140M Series A for multi-core quantum units.

Lenovo (Morrisville, NC): AI Engineering Intern, Summer 2026

NVIDIA (Santa Clara, CA): Low Power ASIC Engineer, Entry-Level

Mistral AI (Paris, FR): Product Designer, Mistral Cloud, Mid-Level

Together AI (San Francisco, CA): Director of Tax, Filings, Senior-Level