Even as investment keeps pouring into the AI sector, new figures around OpenAI's revenue targets have shaken the markets. The company's annual revenue expectation was reportedly revised down from the previously discussed $70 billion to $50 billion — a gap of $20 billion.

What's behind the gap?

According to Bloomberg, the likely reason lies in how sales from cloud computing partnerships are accounted for. Anthropic, which works with giants like Google and Amazon, books sales made through these partnerships as its own revenue. OpenAI handles the same items differently.

As a result, the two companies' figures cannot be directly compared. The difference in method makes the picture more complicated than it appears and narrows the room investors have for interpretation.

A wave of selling in tech stocks

Once the news about revenue expectations spread, technology stocks saw sharp volatility. Nvidia lost 2.9%, while Oracle fell 5.5%. The S&P 500 Information Technology sector also slipped 1.8%.

The episode once again showed how fragile the balance behind AI investments is. A single company's forecast revision can move the share performance of an entire sector.