Nvidia and Micron shares bounced back in Friday premarket trading after a Bloomberg report said OpenAI is on track for $70 billion in annualized net revenue by year-end. The rebound reversed a sell-off triggered a day earlier by a Financial Times report citing a $50 billion figure, a gap the Financial Times and Bloomberg attributed to an accounting difference rather than slower growth.
Chip stocks snap back after the OpenAI scare
Nvidia shares fell approximately 3% on Thursday, while Micron dropped nearly 5%. The decline followed a Financial Times report that OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate stood at approximately $50 billion at the end of September. Investors had pieced together expectations closer to the high $60 billions by comparing OpenAI with rival Anthropic, so the gap triggered a broad pullback. The Nasdaq slid 1.25% to 1.4% as the AI trade took the hit.
By Friday, the mood reversed. Nvidia and AMD rose 1.4% and 1.7% respectively in premarket trading. Broadcom gained 1.9%, while Micron and Sandisk both climbed 1.8%.
OpenAI points to a $70 billion target
Bloomberg reported Friday that OpenAI is eyeing annualized net revenue of $70 billion by the end of the year, mostly on strength in its enterprise business. The company's total run-rate growth for the third quarter came in at 77%, and its enterprise segment posted 107% growth. OpenAI's annual run rate started 2026 at roughly $20 billion, so even the contested $50 billion figure marked a sharp climb within the year.
The $20 billion gap between the Financial Times figure and prior projections came down to accounting. According to the Financial Times and Bloomberg, Anthropic includes the gross amount of some sales made through its cloud partners, while OpenAI only counts its own share of revenue generated through those partnerships. OpenAI didn't reply to MarketWatch's request for comment on the numbers cited in the Financial Times report.
Why chip stocks track OpenAI so closely
Nvidia supplies the GPUs that train and run large AI models, and Micron makes the memory chips those systems depend on, so both move with how much companies like OpenAI plan to spend. OpenAI is also in fundraising talks targeting more than $30 billion at a valuation of around $1.4 trillion, a round that would signal whether large investors accept the growth story despite OpenAI's projected cash burn through 2030.
According to Jefferies analyst Jeffrey Favuzza: the market will likely "be very excited" once one of the AI leaders goes public, which would offer transparency around actual financial data.
Sources: MarketWatch, Crypto Briefing
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