AI money splits: OpenAI, DeepSeek raise big while CoreWeave, SpaceX slide

This week's divergence isn't a single event but a contrast between two investor classes reading the same AI story differently. Venture capital continued to flow into AI companies such as OpenAI and DeepSeek, even as public markets punished AI-linked stocks like CoreWeave and SpaceX on Thursday. The trigger for the selloff was worry about potentially excessive data-center spending, exemplified by Meta's plan to issue new shares to fund further expansion.

This volatility is unlikely to change soon, with upcoming earnings from major cloud and AI providers. It also raises the prospect of Anthropic's initial public offering of stock, which some wonder could absorb so much public investor money that it blunts appetite for other AI stocks. Meanwhile, the enthusiasm of AI users and the companies serving them appears undiminished, judging from conferences this week such as Nvidia's GTC in Berlin and the PyTorch Conference and AGNTCon+MCPCon in San Jose.