OpenAI looms over earnings from tech hyperscalers

CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman speaks during the 2026 Infrastructure Summit of government officials, corporate executives, and labor leaders, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 11, 2026. Kylie Cooper | Reuters With the four tech hyperscalers — Amazon , Alphabet , Meta and Microsoft — set to report quarterly earnings after the close, hovering over their results is a single company that doesn't even release its financials to the public: OpenAI. The ChatGPT creator, now valued at more than $850 billion by private investors, has become a major market mover over the past year as its revenue and hefty spending are increasingly viewed as a proxy for the artificial intelligence trade. OpenAI would be all over the headlines this week anyway because of a high-profile legal battle between CEO Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk . The two ex-friends were among a group of techies who created OpenAI as a nonprofit lab in 2015, and they're now facing off in court after Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024, alleging they breached the founding agreement. Before opening arguments could begin on Tuesday, shares of companies including Oracle , Nvidia , Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom were sinking from a Wall Street Journal report that OpenAI missed revenue and user growth projections. The report, which OpenAI characterized as "ridiculous," also suggested that OpenAI leaders are worried about the company's ability to keep pace with its massive financial commitments tied to building out data centers. …