• OpenAI recently missed its own targets for new users and revenue, WSJ reported, sending U.S. chipmakers lower in premarket trading on Tuesday.
• OpenAI CFO warns that if sales don’t ramp up fast enough, it may not be able to pay for its computing needs in the future.
• Multibillion-dollar deals at risk: OpenAI’s 6-gigawatt (GW) agreement with Broadcom, and 10 GW each with AMD and NVIDIA.

ChatGPT owner OpenAI’s reported disclosure that it missed its internal performance targets and a warning about its sales momentum have sent ripples through U.S. chip stocks in Tuesday’s premarket trading, reviving the debate over how durable this AI-driven demand rally is. 

Shares of NVIDIA (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Broadcom (AVGO) are down between 3% - 6% in premarket trading.

The Wall Street Journal reported late on Monday that the artificial intelligence firm has missed its own new-user acquisition and sales goals. The firm’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, also warned that if OpenAI fails to ramp up sales, it will be unable to fund its future computing requirements.

The WSJ report also noted that ChatGPT failed to meet the one billion weekly active users target by the end of 2025, hurt by the rising popularity of Google’s Gemini.

Why This Matters For Chip Stocks

U.S. chipmakers have significant partnerships with OpenAI, especially with NVIDIA, AMD, and Broadcom, and the firm’s declining performance raises serious investor concerns about whether those partnerships will meaningfully materialize.

In October last year, OpenAI secured multibillion-dollar deals with all three chipmakers. The firm said it struck an agreement to buy Broadcom’s chips for 10 gigawatts of computing capacity; another 10-gigawatt $30 billion deal with NVIDIA, which was initially for up to $100 billion; and signed a six-gigawatt deal with AMD, which included warrants allowing OpenAI to acquire up to 10% of AMD's shares.

The Bigger Risk: Funding 

The CFO’s cash crunch warning raises eyebrows for the rate at which OpenAI has been burning cash. As of March 31, OpenAI has raised $122 billion and has a post-money valuation of $852 billion.

Moreover, the poor performance targets jeopardize top investors Microsoft and SoftBank’s positions in the company. Microsoft, being an early investor and a top stakeholder, has invested $13 billion and owns more than a quarter of the AI firm. SofBank, as of last December, has invested north of $40 billion in its nearly 11% stake.

OpenAI initially emerged as the most promising AI company, with multiple U.S. tech firms rushing to strike a partnership to leverage its popular chatbot app and other AI capabilities. But recently, the company has lost ground to its main rival, Anthropic, which has been successful with Claude, its software coding AI.

So far this year, NVDA, AMD, and AVGO have outperformed the S&P 500 benchmark. However, AMD is the only stock among the trio that beat the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) and the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) over the same period.

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