More market details to come, but first, a ripple of doubt just hit the AI trade caused by OpenAI reportedly missing revenue and user growth milestones. Specifically, failing to hit a goal to reach a billion weekly active users for ChatGPT by the end of 2025, followed by misses in 2026 to quote multiple monthly revenue targets. That's according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal with the same report saying that OpenAI's Chief Financial Officer, Sarah Friar, had raised internal concerns about the company's financial trajectory. Specifically, she's been warning that massive compute spending may be hard to sustain if revenue doesn't keep pace.
Well, in recent months, board directors have apparently scrutinized OpenAI's planned data center spend increasingly closely. Now, all of this is critical context when you consider the scale here. OpenAI and its partners are tied to hundreds of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure commitments with some estimates north of $300 billion, potentially getting far higher over time.
Well, the market's reaction to this today has been fast and furious. Shares of Oracle dropped sharply at one point around 7% down largely because of its enormous multi-year cloud deal tied to OpenAI. On the chip side, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom dropped roughly 2 to 4%. That's as investors reassessed how fast AI demand will actually scale. The broader market fell with the Nasdaq composite down more than 1% at points today.
Now, there is one comment that really caught my eye in the Journal's article and I really recommend checking it out. Friar is said to have cautioned that the AI giant is not yet ready for the reporting standards required of a public company and that more internal controls need to be put in place before an IPO. Something that the markets have pegged as likely for as soon as Q4 of this year.
Well, Sarah Friar's voice is a particularly credible one on this point, by the way. Before joining OpenAI as CFO in June 2024, Friar was CEO of Nextdoor, taking that company public in 2021. She was previously CFO at Square, where she, you guessed it, spearheaded taking public the company now known as Block. Prior to that, Friar worked at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Salesforce, and she currently serves on the boards of Walmart and Consensus. So, with this stellar resume, trust me, Friar does not want to be the face of a botched IPO.
So, with a question mark over when OpenAI may, in fact, IPO and finally get a cash return out to its backers, it also just raised a massive round of new capital, more than 120 billion dollars. This question mark has left a little bit of a blight over the shares of one particular investor, and that's SoftBank Group, ticker SFTBY, down about 10% today. We're going to keep on watching.
Well, coming up, my conversation with famed Wedbush tech bull Dan Ives, and why he views AI today as Las Vegas in 1955. Still, he believes a desert today, and America's building the strip. And later, the fallout from today's news that OPEC is losing a member state. But first, a word from our sponsor, Charles Schwab.
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Well, it's Tuesday, Therefore, it is money mover day. And so, I wanted to hear from one money mover who's found fans among both institutional and retail investors. And that is, of course, equity analyst and ETF manager Dan Ives. He's the global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities. And Dan's analysis covers some of the hottest publicly traded companies in the world, from Nvidia to Tesla. And Dan doesn't just write recommendations on where investors should put their money. He actually deploys capital directly, too. So, we discussed the aha moments from Dan's recent trip to Asia, why he thinks that the SASpocalypse is unwarranted, and Dan looks into his crystal ball to give us some specific smaller cap stock picks. So, I'm delighted to welcome Dan Ives onto the show. Dan Ives, friend of show. I've got I'm really excited to ask you the following question. You just launched a new ETF.
You launched one last summer that was focused on the AI revolution, and this next one is on AI power and infrastructure. Like, just give us a little bit of an overview on why you decided to do that.
Yeah, I mean, look, it's all based on our research. Again, you go back to the year the AI 30, and now the power 30. Look, it's my view, like, our research is all about trying to find the derivatives of the AI revolution. From the core players, whether it's Mag 7, Nvidia, to obviously names like Palantir and Iron and other names that have popped out. Now, from a power 30, it's trying to identify like how you power in the data centers. Who are going to be the winners? Whether it's the Quanta's, the Constellations, and others. And that's really like that's the whole goal here is you know, is really investors that follow our research.
So, I'm taking a look at the top holdings. This is as of Friday, April 24th, in the AI power and infrastructure ETF. You've got in there GE, Vernova, Siemens Energy, Bloom Energy and CEO coming actually on for an interview, Vertiv Holdings. We're in the thick almost of earning season. Looking into your crystal ball, what do you think this earning season's going to look like for these kinds of names?
Well, I think look, it's bullish because when you there's more data centers under construction today than active data centers. So, when you think about all the cap backs and everything we're seeing from the hyperscalers and what you're seeing from Intel and what you're going to see ultimately from Nvidia and others and we saw from our Asia trip the last few weeks, like it's we're in the third inning of this whole thing playing out. And that's bullish for the power players, it's bullish for the data center, it's there's going to be so many derivatives that's playing out across tech.
Talk to us about your findings from your Asia trip. And it's actually been a minute since I was out there specifically on a work trip, but I always come back from Asia feeling as I've had a glimpse into the future. What did you see? What were the big aha moments you had coming back from the latest field trip?
I mean, to me it's really demand and supply. It's still 10:1, 12:1 for Nvidia chips. But we didn't see any sort of worries about when it comes to helium or from a supply perspective and that was a huge positive just given what we've seen, given the geopolitical and the strains and some of the worries there. I think the biggest thing is just like look, this memory super cycle is going to continue to play out. And I think what you're seeing in hardware will translate into the hyperscalers and it's going to translate into big tech and I think it just shows where you have less than what, 3% of companies in the US that have truly gone down the AI path. I think it just shows how early these we are and that's why you know, me and you have talked like over the years say we're going to see Nasdaq 20,000, Nasdaq 25,000 and we're going to see Nasdaq 30,000 and the bears when they're in their caves always looking for some catastrophe. And remember the bears have called seven or eight of the last two downturns the last 20 years.
So, just dig into something you just threw away a big comment in there, Dan. You just literally just hidden there that under 3% of companies in the US have really, you know, done a deep dive into or are moving into AI. How exactly do you define that? What are you measuring when you say that?
And that's talking to customers. I mean I go when we talked like if I talked to like covering in tax since the late 90s, like so many customers that we talked to. So, if I'm talking to 100, 150 enterprises all different sizes, the reality is is that we're still early days. In the beginning stages of this whole thing playing out and that's where I think investors continue to underestimate the scale and scope of AI. And for the first time in 30 years, the US is ahead of China when it comes to tech and that's why you're starting to see this spread out from an Intel to a Cisco to a Dell. It's not and it goes back to like our whole view. It's not just about seven names, 10 names. It's spreading.
And let's talk about how it's spreading and maybe where there's not enough awareness that the spread is on the come. Could you just give us your perspective on the SAS-copolis? Where are you on the software names?
I mean, I think look, I continue to view it's the most disconnected narrative in my career. Relative to the Anthropic AI ghost fears. Now look, are there going to be some software companies disintermediated by coding, call center, parts of marketing? No doubt. But the view that a Salesforce, a ServiceNow, a Workday, an Oracle, a Microsoft, that they're going to be disintermediated, that a CrowdStrike, a Palo Alto, I just strongly disagree because the reality is is that right now investors are painting software with the same brush, every company. And these are AI-native stacks, when you come Anthropic and OpenAI. And when you look at what these installed base players have built, it's not just about software, it's data. It's ultimately really the data that they've built. That's their moat.
So, I completely agree with you that data is the moat. And you've talked about CrowdStrike and Palo Alto. Look, I'm with you. It's sort of I've been perplexed by the sell-off in those cyber stocks just because I feel as though now more than ever you need cybersecurity to be top of mind, and there they are as the lead providers. But talk to me about some others which I think have been partners of the Anthropic's of the world, like a Figma, and you can look at the Microsoft Office suite of products. And now I think we're seeing signs that Anthropic can actually displace some of its partners. Am I being too bearish when it comes to that particular use case?
I think that is like that's part of like the big debate. Like can they just replace partners? I think some of that's easier said than done. I also think if you look at like Anthropic Dario, it's more like AI alarmism is what I'll call it in terms of just if they went after glasses, Warby Parker would be down 50%. So I think part of that is a little dystopian and a little way over done. But it also speaks to like if you look at survey data in the United States like under TSA lines, it's AI because if an employee feels that AI is just going to take their job and raise their electricity bill, why would they be positive? So it's also it's very important to where I mean I see from Palantir and I think we're going to see it from like on the consumer perspective with names like Apple, Google, Meta and others. AI from robotics to humanoids to what it's going to do for pharmaceutical to biotech, the amount of positives are huge. I just think right now the problem is it's a view like it just cuts jobs which cuts seats, lowers pricing pressure and views the software business as basically structurally broken. And I think that really is what I strongly disagree with.
