OpenAI’s growth may be sputtering. These are the stocks most at risk
Tech companies tethered to OpenAI are in the spotlight Tuesday following a report that the ChatGPT maker missed recent targets for new users and revenue, calling its expansion plans into question. Top executives are now concerned that the company might not have the money for future computing contracts, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday . OpenAI responded to the report, calling it “ridiculous” and saying that executives are ” aligned on buying as much compute as we can.” Analysts aren’t losing their shirts over the news of a potential slowdown at OpenAI, seeing it more as a sign of ascendent competition from rival products offered by Anthropic and Google Gemini than a red flag about the prospects for the sector. However, if growth starts to stall at OpenAI, it will affect a range of businesses in the tech sector – from chipmakers to cloud providers as well as lenders. Here’s a look at some of the stocks that are most leveraged to OpenAI. OpenAI’s closest relationships Jefferies shared their equal weighted basket of OpenAI levered names in a Tuesday note to investors. It contains SoftBank, AMD, CoreWeave, Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia and Broadcom. Analysts say that Oracle , which has made a $300 billion pledge to OpenAI, is the top stock to watch for fallout from a potential slowdown. Oracle stock was down more than 3% on Tuesday. “[OpenAI’s] biggest commitment is to Oracle. They have a $300 billion commitment, so to the extent that they can’t live up to that, that would be the hardest hit,” Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC. After Oracle, it’s Microsoft , with a $250 billion pledge to OpenAI. Analysts say that Microsoft is much more diversified in its AI investment and initiatives, offering its own chatbot Copilot with a separate customer base. Microsoft shares dipped Tuesday before rebounding on the day. “We view the OpenAI and Microsoft revised partnership agreement as an evolution towards a Copilot-led platform value creation strategy, leveraging multi-frontier AI model future inclusive of home grown models,” Yi Fu Lee of Benchmark Equity Research wrote. OpenAI and Microsoft announced an updated partnership agreement on Monday, which Microsoft said was “grounded in flexibility.” The company also said its license to OpenAI intellectual property “will now be non-exclusive.” MSFT YTD mountain MSFT year to date Benchmark’s Lee said she thought the amended OpenAI and Microsoft partnership agreement “should consume much of the attention during earnings Q & A,” which is scheduled for Wednesday after market close. Another major partner for OpenAI is Amazon , with about $140 billion in commitments, though the company is similarly diversified in its AI approach. Analysts see OpenAI contributing immediately to Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue, which could be affected by the plateau in new OpenAI users. “The OpenAI deal, $38B signed in Nov 2025 which then got expanded to $100B for eight years in Feb 2026, could also bring immediate revenue contribution to AWS,” Mizuho analyst Lloyd Walmsley and colleagues wrote in a Tuesday note. Shares of AI-dedicated cloud computing company CoreWeave , which announced in September a $6.5 billion expanded partnership with OpenAI to train its latest software models, dropped about 6%. Slower growth already baked in? Investors raised a number of questions with the Journal’s report, arguing that markets had already been processing the moderation in OpenAI’s growth. “I view the article as largely a rehash of what we already knew: OpenAI’s growth seems to have slowed in late-2025 into early-2026 as the business ceded some share to Anthropic and Gemini,” said John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds. “Tech stocks, particularly various pockets of semiconductors, have been extremely strong over the last several weeks – aided in part by a view that OpenAI’s fundamentals have stabilized,” he said. DA Davidson’s Gil Luria agreed, arguing that OpenAI has been ceding market share. “Anthropic is exceeding expectations … OpenAI doubled their revenue run rate in six months, but that’s less than Anthropic, which has maybe tripled or quadrupled its revenue in six months.” — CNBC’s Yun Li contributed reporting.
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