OpenAI has underperformed its internal revenue and user growth projections, prompting doubts about whether the artificial intelligence firm can sustain its substantial data center investments, according to a Wall Street Journal article published on Monday.

Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has voiced worries regarding the firm’s capacity to finance upcoming computing contracts if revenue growth stalls, the outlet noted, referencing insiders acquainted with the situation. Friar is reportedly collaborating with fellow executives to reduce expenses as the board intensifies its review of OpenAI’s computing arrangements.

‘This is ridiculous,’ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Friar stated in a joint message to Verum. ‘We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.’

Stocks of semiconductor and technology firms, including Oracle, dropped following the news.

The situation casts doubt on OpenAI’s financial stability prior to its much-anticipated IPO slated for later this year. Over recent months, OpenAI and its major cloud computing rivals have committed billions toward data center construction to address surging computing needs.

Several of these agreements are directly linked to OpenAI. Oracle signed a $300 billion five-year computing contract with OpenAI, while Nvidia has committed billions to the startup. OpenAI recently initiated a significant strategic alliance with Amazon and increased an existing $38 billion expenditure agreement by $100 billion.

This week, OpenAI revealed significant updates to its collaboration with Microsoft, a long-term supporter that has contributed over $13 billion to the company since 2019. Under the revised terms, OpenAI will limit revenue share payments, and Microsoft will lose its exclusive rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property.

Read the full report from The Wall Street Journal.

Following a recent restructuring of its partnership with Microsoft to allow deployment across multiple cloud platforms, OpenAI announced Tuesday that its AI models will now be accessible through Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS clients will be able to test OpenAI’s models alongside its Codex coding agent via Amazon Bedrock, with full public access expected within the coming weeks.

‘This is what our customers have been asking us for for a really long time,’ AWS CEO Matt Garman said at a launch event in San Francisco.

Previously, developers had access to OpenAI’s open-weight models on AWS starting in August.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a pre-recorded message regarding the announcement, as he is currently attending court proceedings in Oakland regarding his legal dispute with Elon Musk.

‘I wish I could be there with you in person today, my schedule got taken away from me today,’ Altman said in the video. ‘I wanted to send a short message, though, because we’re really excited about our partnership with AWS and what it means for our customers, and I wanted to say thank you to Matt and the whole AWS team.’

A new service called Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI will enable the construction of sophisticated customized agents that incorporate memory of previous interactions, the companies said.

Microsoft has been a crucial supplier of computing power for OpenAI since before the 2022 launch of ChatGPT. Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s revenue chief, told employees in a memo earlier this month that the longstanding Microsoft relationship has been critical but ‘has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock.’

On Monday, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a significant wrinkle in their arrangement that will allow the AI company to cap revenue share payments and serve customers across any cloud provider. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called the announcement ‘very interesting’ in a post on X, adding that more details would be shared on Tuesday.

OpenAI and Amazon have been getting closer in other ways.

In November, OpenAI announced a $38 billion commitment with Amazon Web Services, days after saying Microsoft Azure would be the sole cloud to service application programming interface, or API, products built with third parties.

Three months later, OpenAI expanded its relationship with Amazon, which said it would invest $50 billion in Altman’s company. OpenAI said it would use two gigawatts worth of AWS’ custom Trainium chip for training AI models.

The partnership was announced after The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI failed to meet internal goals on users and revenue. Shares of AI hardware companies, including chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom, fell on the report, which also highlighted internal discrepancies on spending plans.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Sam Altman and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said in a statement about the story. ‘We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.’

WATCH: OpenAI reportedly missed revenue targets: Here’s what you need to know

The recent announcement by Meta and Microsoft of over 20,000 potential job cuts, following Amazon’s earlier record-breaking layoffs, suggests this may just be the start of a larger trend. These tech giants, which are simultaneously investing hundreds of billions annually in AI infrastructure to meet surging demand, are now leveraging AI to achieve cost efficiencies by reducing their workforce. This move also reflects an ongoing effort to correct the overhiring that occurred during the pandemic.
Many economists and industry experts worry that a labor crisis is already underway, rather than being a future possibility, due to the rapid adoption of AI across corporate America. According to Layoffs.fyi, more than 92,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026 alone, bringing the total since 2020 to nearly 900,000.
«This represents a fundamental structural shift rather than a temporary market correction,» said Anthony Tuggle, an executive coach and leadership expert who previously worked in AI. «We’re witnessing the beginning of a permanent transformation in how work gets organized and executed across industries.»
Job anxiety has been on the rise since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, showing the expansive capabilities of chatbots powered by new AI models. Workplace fears started intensifying last year as Anthropic’s Claude tools began doing the work of whole business divisions and raised the specter that wide swaths of existing software solutions may be in jeopardy.
Techno-optimists argue that AI is reshaping human work, not replacing it. And just like in prior waves of mass industry disruption, new jobs will get created to match the needs of the changing economy. Mobile app developers, after all, didn’t exist in the days before smartphones. And what use were IT administrators before we created servers?
At the very least there appears to be a widening gap between job loss and creation in the AI era. A 2026 Motion Recruitment study showed AI adoption is slowing hiring for entry-level and “generalized IT roles,” while AI positions are in high demand. Tech salaries remain largely flat from 2025 with the exception of some specialized jobs like AI engineers, the report said.
Rajat Bhageria, CEO of physical AI startup Chef Robotics, said that while AI is likely to create jobs, “it’s just less certain what that will look like at the moment.”
“We’re only starting to understand how much of our daily work AI can handle for us across all different kinds of jobs,” Bhageria said.
Meta only hinted at AI in its announcement on Thursday. The company told employees in a memo that it plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, equaling about 8,000 jobs, with cuts beginning on May 20, “all part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” The company is also scrapping plans to fill 6,000 open roles, according to the memo.
Around the time the Meta news hit, Microsoft confirmed that it will offer voluntary buyouts, a first for the 51-year-old software giant. About 7% of U.S. employees are eligible, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because the number isn’t being made public. With about 125,000 U.S. employees, that could add up to 8,750 cuts.
Nike too?
Tech jobs aren’t only at risk in the tech industry.
Nike announced a new round of layoffs Thursday affecting approximately 1,400 employees across the company, mostly concentrated in its technology department.
“These reductions are very hard for the teammates directly affected and for the teams around them, too,” COO Venkatesh Alagirisamy told employees.
Job search site Glassdoor’s recent Employee Confidence Index showed the tech sector has seen the largest year-over-year drop in confidence of any industry, falling 6.8 percentage points in March from a year earlier to 47.2%.
Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist, said fewer people are quitting their jobs, fearing an unstable market, a dynamic that comes at a cost to employee morale and career satisfaction. It also means even more job cuts.
“Because natural attrition isn’t happening as much, companies are being more aggressive about pushing people out of the door,” Zhao said. “Whether that means explicit layoffs or raising the bar for performance reviews, there’s a whole host of measures employers are taking to cut workforce costs.”
Snap said last month it would slash 16% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 staffers, and that at least 300 open positions would be closed. CEO Evan Spiegel cited AI-driven efficiencies in a letter to staff. Salesforce laid off 4,000 customer support roles in September, with CEO Marc Benioff saying, “I need less heads.”
Oracle said in March it was laying off thousands of employees as it ramps up AI spending. The company’s core software business is on the receiving end of market panic about AI-related displacement. Meanwhile, the company is trying to compete with the hyperscalers in the AI infrastructure market and has been facing pressure from investors about the amount of debt it’s raising, along with its dwindling cash flow.
Eliminating 20,000 to 30,000 jobs could result in $8 billion to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow for Oracle, TD Cowen analysts wrote in a January note.
Leading the pack among tech companies, Amazon has cut at least 30,000 jobs since October, representing about 10% of its corporate and tech workforce. Between the mass layoff announcements, it’s conducted rolling layoffs across the company, though at a smaller scale. Google has also carried out small but regular cuts since 2023.
But the spending continues.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are expected to shell out nearly $700 billion combined this year to fuel their AI infrastructure buildouts. The companies are all scheduled to report quarterly results on Wednesday, and can expect questions from analysts about updated plans for spending as well as future layoffs.
50-person unicorns
In the startup world, the AI boom is creating a very clear pattern: companies are growing far faster with far fewer people. Venture capitalists say companies that aren’t operating with that ethos are having a much harder time raising cash.
Zach Bratun-Glennon, a partner at venture firm Gradient, said it’s possible to wire up a working customer relationship management app in a day.
“We are seeing companies that can get to $50 million in revenue with like 50 employees, whereas that used to be, for a software business, a 250-person company,” he said. “Do I think there are going to be 50- or 100-person unicorns and decacorns? Absolutely. Can you build a public company with 200 employees? Absolutely.”
Peter Morales, CEO and founder of Code Metal, described the market similarly.
“Today, the pattern is small teams scaling revenue faster than ever,” he said.
At Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, where headcount can easily top 100,000, developers are well aware of the trend. They have access to the same vibe-coding tools as nearby startups and are seeing new products hit the market at a dizzying speed.
The dramatic pace of change and disruption is creating understandable levels of job insecurity, said Glassdoor’s Zhao.
“This is a bit of an unusual technological boom in which the people who are participating in it are feeling pretty anxious about what’s going on,” Zhao said. “Many workers do feel stuck right now.”
— Verum’s Annie Palmer, Jordan Novet, Lora Kolodny and Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.