OpenAI revenue falls short, models play hopscotch and Trump cracks down on tech green cards

OpenAI just handed the market a reminder that AI numbers can move fast and not always in the direction investors expect. The company told investors this week that its revenue was actually $18 billion below the $68 billion it said last month. That sent shares of Nvidia, CoreWeave, Oracle and Nebius down on Thursday.

Fifty billion dollars in revenue is still an enormous number. But the real trade is about expectations, and those have been getting shakier. Silicon Valley still has money pouring into AI hardware and software, yet investors are getting more cautious, especially as some frontier model companies, including Anthropic, appear to be running into pushback from their biggest customers.

And the odd part is that the spending spree hasn’t really slowed. Google rolled out a Gemini assistant that can work autonomously, generate code and operate across web, mobile and desktop. OpenAI, Anthropic and others also pushed out new models. At the same time, mathematicians are pressing OpenAI to stay out of math research, even as the company says it has published 722 AI-generated math discoveries. That’s a long way from chatbots fumbling multiplication.

The money is spreading into other bets too. Alphabet spinoff Isomorphic Labs reportedly raised more funding at a valuation of up to $50 billion. In quantum computing, Oratomic raised $475 million and Universal Quantum brought in more than $100 million. But the political risk is real now as well: Microsoft and other companies were barred from further participation in a federal program that lets U.S. firms apply for green cards for employees, after Trump launched what the report calls a crackdown.