New York, April 28, 2026, 08:05 EDT
Oracle stock slipped before the bell on Tuesday after the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI fell short of its latest user and revenue goals, raising new concerns about whether the ChatGPT maker can sustain its heavy AI infrastructure spending. Shares of CoreWeave and SoftBank also declined, as traders reassessed the outlook for firms closely linked to OpenAI’s investment pace.
This shift is significant: Oracle’s AI ambitions lean hard on its cloud infrastructure these days, not least because of that five-year, $300 billion computing-power deal reportedly inked with OpenAI. If OpenAI cools off, sentiment isn’t the only casualty. Investors will want to know just how fast Oracle can actually convert those hefty contract wins into cash.
It’s a tough moment. Wall Street wants evidence that tech firms’ AI spending will actually pay off—rather than just building massive data centers or racking up more debt. Analysts at Goldman Sachs noted that AI-related worries are forcing investors to revisit their long-term growth assumptions for software, a sector whose market value often hinges on profits that may not materialize for years.
Oracle slid 7.7% to $159.80 in premarket action, with CoreWeave off 7.4% at $104. In Tokyo, SoftBank Group—big on OpenAI—ended the session down almost 10%, and Arm Holdings shed 8.1%.
OpenAI’s finance chief, Sarah Friar, flagged internal worries over the company’s ability to cover future computing bills if revenue growth stalls, according to The Journal. Last year’s haul: about $13 billion in revenue, still not enough to turn a profit. OpenAI faces over $600 billion in contracted payments to cloud providers in the years ahead, a WSJ markets piece noted.
The numbers say it all for Oracle. In March, the company reported remaining performance obligations hit $553 billion in its fiscal Q3, a jump of 325% year over year. Most of that surge? Big AI deals, according to Oracle.
Oracle has pushed back on worries that it alone will have to bankroll the AI surge. Back in March, the company noted that several major AI contracts involved either upfront payments from customers or hardware—specifically, graphics processors—provided by those customers. Management said there’s no plan to seek extra funding for such agreements. The company is still targeting $50 billion in capital spending for fiscal 2026 and has bumped up its fiscal 2027 revenue outlook to $90 billion.
The OpenAI report rattled what’s been a packed trade. Last month, CoreWeave—Nvidia-backed—landed an $11.9 billion infrastructure deal with OpenAI. Meanwhile, Oracle is vying with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure to win the biggest AI workloads out there. Bloomberg says investors are zeroing in on a shorter list of OpenAI-adjacent stocks: Oracle, CoreWeave, Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, and SoftBank. They’re seen as the main stand-ins for bets on ChatGPT-driven growth.
The bull argument here carries real weight. Back in March, eMarketer’s Jacob Bourne described Oracle’s quarter as “a beat and a stress test result for the AI trade,” pointing to the company as “the canary in the coal mine” due to its significant AI infrastructure exposure. Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk, for his part, told investors he expects the margin profile of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to improve as customers ramp up use of database and other cloud services. Reuters
Oracle’s latest bounce saw sentiment cool, with some market watchers dialing back their optimism. CNBC’s Jim Cramer, quoted by Insider Monkey and picked up by Yahoo Finance, labeled the surge “a short squeeze.” He pointed to Oracle’s “grand ambitions” and argued that easier financing might give the company room to ramp up infrastructure spending. Insider Monkey
The risk stands out. Should OpenAI’s revenue fail to keep pace with its computing obligations, Oracle might see its backlog conversion slow, find financing less accessible, or come under greater scrutiny from investors concerned about customer concentration. Other persistent trouble spots for any AI data-center project: power supply, chip sourcing, and construction schedules.
Tuesday’s selloff isn’t signaling the end of the AI infrastructure cycle. What’s changing: investors aren’t counting on OpenAI’s future spending as guaranteed money for the companies building around it.
