AI startup OpenAI has missed its own estimates for revenue, according to its latest earnings, also missing on new user targets. The latest revenue figures have investors and company leaders equally concerned, with OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar even hinting at worries about its existing AI data center deals.
Friar reportedly told fellow company leaders this week that the company may not be able to pay for future computing contracts if its revenue doesn’t improve fast. Sam Altman’s startup has several existing contracts, with some ranging as high as $300B in value. The lower revenue could hurt those deals and put OpenAI in serious debt, impacting the way the Street views the company ahead of its proposed IPO later this year.
It doesn’t help OpenAI’s cause that both CFO Sarah Friar and CEO Sam Altman are also divided on the IPO efforts. The recent spending scrutiny is constraining Altman’s once-boundless ambitions ahead of a potential initial public offering that could take place by the end of the year. Friar and other executives are now seeking to control costs and instill more discipline in the business, at times putting them at odds with their CEO, people familiar with the company said this week. However, Friar has said that the two aren’t split on the IPO as reports claim.
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“We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day,” Altman and Friar said in a joint statement Monday night. Any suggestion that the pair is divided or pulling back on securing new computing resources is “ridiculous,” they said.
OpenAI’s revenue miss impacted many tech stocks on Wednesday. The Nasdaq composite was down more than 1% earlier Tuesday following The Wall Street Journal’s report, including declines in Nvidia NVDA, Oracle ORCL, and other close OpenAI partners. Global tech giant SoftBank Group, which has committed more than $60 billion to OpenAI, fell 9.9% in Tokyo trading.