OpenAI's missed revenue and user growth targets triggered an AI stock sell-off, signaling the company may replace Nvidia as the bellwether for the AI industry.

OpenAI missed some of its revenue and user growth goals last month, prompting share prices of Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and Taiwan Semiconductor to fall sharply (though briefly). The incident demonstrated OpenAI's influence over investor sentiment ahead of its expected IPO.

OpenAI has about 900 million monthly active users and estimates revenue of $280 billion by 2028—figures that will soon rival Nvidia's $216 billion in fiscal 2026 revenue. Because OpenAI and Anthropic's LLM (large language models that generate text) are driving most AI software innovation, their financial results are becoming a leading indicator for where AI companies are headed.

Most companies building AI tools rely on OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude as their foundation, with Anthropic holding an estimated 40% of LLM market share and OpenAI holding 27%. Investors buying semiconductor stocks and AI-related shares will need to pay closer attention to OpenAI and Anthropic's sales, user growth, and losses once they go public.