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Tuesday, October 13, 2026 |
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The Last Page.
The last page, first.
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OpenAI’s $70 Billion Was Really $50 Billion. Now What?
Ray Dalio says the AI bubble is close to bursting, and Dan Ives says this is no time to get nervous. A filing expected within weeks shows which of them is right.
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Today’s story runs through the index funds inside most retirement accounts. The paid message below is about the same funds, from a gold seller’s point of view.
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Goldman Sachs reports that AI-focused stocks now make up 45% of the S&P 500. One company, Nvidia, carries as much weight in the index as the bottom 224 stocks combined.
So an index fund that feels diversified leans hard on one trade. Michael Burry, known for calling the 2008 crash, says today looks like 2001.
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The story
For a month, investors passed around one number. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was said to be selling at a pace of nearly $70 billion a year.
On Thursday the Financial Times reported what OpenAI itself told investors. The pace at the end of September was about $50 billion.
No money vanished. Anthropic, OpenAI’s main rival, counts the full price of AI it sells through Amazon and Google. OpenAI reportedly leaves those partner sales out of its count. Investors stretched OpenAI’s number to compare the two, and that produced the $70 billion.
The market did its own math anyway. Oracle, which holds a five-year computing contract with OpenAI worth about $300 billion, fell 5% that day. CoreWeave, which rents out AI computers bought with borrowed money, fell almost 8%. Nvidia lost about 3%.
This one ends inside your index fund either way. If you own the S&P 500, you own Nvidia and Oracle whether you picked them or not.
The two camps were already on air. A day before the report, Ray Dalio, the hedge fund founder, spoke in Singapore. He said AI is nearing the point where bubbles burst: “I think we’re close to that.” The day after it, Dan Ives of Wedbush called this “not the time to be skittish.”
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Annualized revenue
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One recent stretch of sales, multiplied out to a full year. It is a speed reading, and each company picks which sales go on the speedometer.
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$70B
OpenAI’s yearly sales pace, as investors cited it during September
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$65B
Anthropic’s latest public figure (July), counting full sales through cloud partners
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$50B
OpenAI’s own figure for the end of September, per the Financial Times
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If the filing holds up
Run forward to April 2027
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If it shrinks too
Run forward to September 2027
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Best case
APRIL 2027. Anthropic listed before Thanksgiving, and its filing held up. The audited revenue sat close to the headline, partner sales and all.
OpenAI followed in the spring. It had told investors its revenue grew 70%, according to the same reports. Another year at that pace would take $50 billion to about $85 billion, and it roughly did. Once real sales kept growing, the smaller count stopped mattering.
Oracle’s new data centers came online full. CoreWeave refinanced its debt at lower rates because its customers kept paying.
Your index fund ended the winter a little higher, carried by the same few names that scared you in October. The crash predicted for this year was pushed back again, and the people who predicted it were booked for next year’s shows.
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Worst case
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SEPTEMBER 2027. Anthropic’s filing arrived in November and showed the same gap. Once the auditors moved partner sales into their own line, the headline shrank.
The listing went ahead at a lower price. Employees who had waited years for a payday started selling. That was the moment Dalio had described, when people trade paper wealth for spending money and find fewer buyers than they expected.
The lenders behind CoreWeave asked for more. Oracle slowed a buildout it had borrowed to fund, and Nvidia’s order book flattened by spring.
Your S&P 500 fund rode the trade down the same way it rode it up. The data centers still hummed in Texas. The prices paid for them had been set by a number that turned out to be optimistic.
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How it ends
You get an AI boom that cools and keeps building, unless Anthropic’s filing shrinks the way OpenAI’s number did.
We ran it both ways, and the data centers are the settled part. The contracts are signed and the concrete is poured.
On Thursday the measuring stick moved. OpenAI’s money is real and growing fast, but it is smaller than the shortcut figure that lenders and suppliers had been quoting.
So the question moves to the first audited numbers. Anthropic is the company the bigger figure was built to match. If its revenue holds up under the auditors’ rules, AI stocks cool without breaking.
This argument has been had before. In 2000, accounting rule-makers drew a line for online travel sellers. Some could book a full plane ticket as revenue, and the rest had to book only their cut. Priceline survived as a company. Its stock still ended 2000 down more than 90% from the 1999 peak.
For you, an S&P 500 fund is a bet on AI, chosen or not. A cooler boom means flatter years. A broken one means a long climb back.
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Anthropic’s S-1, the public filing a company makes before it sells shares. It is expected within weeks, ahead of a listing reportedly aimed for before Thanksgiving. It will be posted free on EDGAR, the SEC’s public filings site. Find the revenue line and the note on sales made through Amazon and Google.
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