A report on OpenAI revenue hit chip stocks. Here is what it said.

The Financial Times reported on Thursday that OpenAI's annualised revenue is about $20 billion less than had been signalled before. The report, based on financial documents shared with investors, said the gap is likely to damp optimism about the growth of AI demand.

Other outlets reported the same figures. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, said OpenAI's annualised revenue was roughly $50 billion at the end of September. The FT reported, and Bloomberg repeated, that the earlier figure near $70 billion came from investors' attempts to calculate OpenAI's revenue the way rival Anthropic does, which accounts for sales through cloud providers differently. TechCrunch added the detail that Anthropic includes sales made by its cloud partners and OpenAI does not; that specific detail is reported by TechCrunch and is not independently confirmed by Ticker Den. Update, October 9: Bloomberg later reported that OpenAI expects to reach or exceed $70 billion by year-end; see Toast & Tickers, October 9.

How markets reacted

The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.25% on the day, the biggest loss of the major indexes. Technology stocks led the declines. CNBC reported Oracle down more than 5% and chipmakers including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices lower in midday trading.

What this does and does not show

Annualised revenue is a run rate: a recent period's sales scaled up to a year. It is not reported revenue and it is not profit. A lower run rate does not say how fast OpenAI is growing or what it will earn. It does matter to markets because large chip and data-center spending plans are built partly on expectations for AI demand.

TechCrunch said it had asked OpenAI for comment; its article did not include a response. Bloomberg reported that OpenAI declined to comment.