New York—April 28, 2026, 10:36 EDT
- Nvidia shares edged lower Tuesday morning, caught up in a wave of skepticism over OpenAI’s growth that weighed on the wider AI sector.
- This shift is significant: spending tied to OpenAI stands out as one of the most visible barometers for demand across chips, servers, and cloud resources.
- Analysts disagreed: some flagged the selloff as a genuine signal of waning demand, while others chalked it up to a typical sharp correction following a rapid run-up.
Nvidia slid 1.8% to $212.78 Tuesday, erasing some of Monday’s rally. The pullback came as traders exited AI names following a report that cast doubt on OpenAI’s user numbers, revenue, and future spending on compute. At its session low, Nvidia hit $208.62, but the chipmaker still held onto a market cap north of $5.2 trillion.
Nvidia finished Monday at $216.61, a move up from Friday’s $208.27, per the company’s investor site. Tuesday’s drop wasn’t isolated to a single name. The pressure landed squarely on the year’s main U.S. equity bet: that AI firms would continue pouring money into massive computing and data-center power for training and deploying AI models.
OpenAI missed its own internal targets for user growth and revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has reportedly flagged rising future computing costs in internal discussions. The company has committed to more than $600 billion in cloud spending over time, the report said—putting added strain on suppliers linked to the AI sector’s expansion.
AI stocks lost ground after the report, Reuters noted, with Oracle, CoreWeave, Arm, and SoftBank all taking a hit. Oracle, said to have a $300 billion, five-year computing pact with OpenAI, and CoreWeave, which inked an $11.9 billion agreement with the same firm last month, were among the biggest movers.
Chip names felt the pressure, too. AMD slid 2.5%, Broadcom dropped 3.3%, and Oracle posted a 3.4% decline during the morning. Nvidia’s dip was less pronounced—size plays a role there, plus it’s still seen as the top supplier for advanced AI chips.
OpenAI didn’t let it slide. In a statement to Business Insider, the company dismissed the Journal’s report as “clickbait” and asserted that business is “firing on all cylinders,” pointing to strong enterprise demand and Codex usage, its coding tool. Business Insider
Not everyone’s convinced the shift is as big as it looks. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities called the OpenAI worries “overblown.” Jefferies strategist Jeffrey Favuzza pointed to a shortage of “numerical datapoints” on revenue in the piece. Business Insider
Some saw the drop as just turbulence in an overcrowded trade. Todd Schoenberger, chief investment officer at CrossCheck Management, told Reuters that pullbacks in AI stocks often spark a “ripple effect” across the sector—deserved or not. For Allan Small, senior investment adviser at Allan Small Financial Group with iA Private Wealth, the latest headlines around OpenAI seemed more like a sign of mounting competition than any sectorwide slowdown. Reuters
The distinction isn’t trivial for Nvidia. Last quarter, the company reported revenue of $68.1 billion—up 73% year-over-year—driven largely by a surge in data-center sales, which jumped 75% to $62.3 billion. Looking ahead, Nvidia’s forecast for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 calls for revenue of around $78.0 billion, give or take 2%. They’re not counting on any data-center compute revenue from China in that projection, either.
OpenAI’s reported shortfall could end up sparking broader doubts about AI returns. If revenue from AI products doesn’t ramp up quickly enough to cover data-center contracts, customers might put off adding capacity, push to revise their cloud deals, or just split their spending among different providers. That scenario would put Nvidia’s premium valuation to the test—despite near-term demand holding up.
Nvidia’s first-quarter fiscal 2027 results drop on May 20 — that’s the company’s next big checkpoint. Between now and then, investors will be reading into this week’s major tech earnings, hunting for any indication that Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta are keeping up the AI infrastructure spending the market expects.
