‘Cold water’ on AI optimism… Shocked by Open AI's annual sales being 27 trillion won lower than expected

(Los Angeles = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kim Kyung-yoon = It was confirmed that the annual sales of OpenAI, a leading American artificial intelligence (AI) company, were $20 billion (approximately 26.88 trillion won) less than initially reported, shocking the market.

According to the Financial Times (FT) and CNN on the 8th (local time), OpenAI recently announced to investors that its annualized sales were approaching $50 billion as of the end of September.

This figure is 29% lower than the originally reported sales volume of OpenAI of $70 billion.

Previously, there was a media report that OpenAI's annualized sales as of July were $40 billion, and later, OpenAI announced that its sales had increased by more than 70% since July, and this number increased to $70 billion.

Even when reports of annual sales of $70 billion poured in, Open AI did not deny the figures.

OpenAI is an unlisted company and does not regularly disclose its financial status. From the perspective of Open AI, which is working hard to attract new investments, annualized sales are one of the important indicators.

However, there is also an explanation that Open AI did not falsely inflate the figures.

One source explained that the information shared with investors appears to have been distorted in the process of comparing the performance of OpenAI with its competitor Antropic.

When Antropic provides AI services through a cloud provider, the entire amount paid by users is included in sales, and the fees paid to the cloud provider are treated as expenses.

On the other hand, Open AI classifies only the amount returned to the company as sales among the amount sold through partner companies.

When trying to remove these differences and compare sales side by side, it was shared among investors that Open AI's annualized sales were $40 billion (as of July), and based on this, it seems that even a theory of $70 billion was created.

Cold water was poured into the market where AI optimism was rampant.

On this day, related technology stocks, including AI semiconductors and cloud providers, all fell.

Ross Mayfield, Baird investment strategist, pointed out, “If there is a crack in the narrative (increasing demand for AI) due to the fact that Open AI is generating less sales than expected, it could have ramifications for the entire AI supply chain,” adding, “This news will definitely have a big impact on the entire AI industry.”