Weekly Commentary: The Question

2025-11-11 12:13:00 ET

The Nasdaq 100 enjoyed one of those well-timed Friday afternoon rallies (1.9% off morning trading lows) to somewhat ease concerns. Still, Nvidia ( NVDA ) sank 7.1% this week. Meta Platforms ( META ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ) fell 4.1%, and Tesla ( TSLA ) dropped 5.9%. Microchip Technology ( MCHP ) lost 9.8%, AMD ( AMD ) 8.8%, Qualcomm ( QCOM ) 5.5%, and Broadcom ( AVGO ) 5.5%. The Semiconductor Index ( SOX ) fell 3.9% (down 7.4% w-t-d at Friday lows). Big tech selling had noteworthy company for much of the week: big financial, though a 2% Friday afternoon bank index rally erased the week's losses. Robinhood ( HOOD ) sank 11.2% this week, Strategy ( MSTR ) 10.2%, Palantir ( PLTR ) 11.2%, and Block ( XYZ ) 13.8%. Even after Friday afternoon's 4.7% rally (sinking below $99,000 intraday), Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) traded down $7,900, or 7.1%, for the week.

The Question:

Brad Gerstner (CEO Altimeter Capital Management), November 3, 2025: "OpenAI's revenues are still a reported $13 billion in 2025, and, Sam, on your live stream this week you talked about this massive commitment to compute - $1.4 trillion over the next four or five years. With big commitments - $500 billion to Nvidia, $300 billion to AMD and Oracle, $250 billion to Azure. So, I think the single biggest question I've heard all week - and hanging over the market - is how can a company with $13 billion in revenues make $1.4 TN of spending commitments? And you've heard the criticism (cut off by Altman)."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: "First of all, we're doing well more revenues than that. And, second of all, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I'll find you a buyer. Enough. I think there's a lot of people who would love to buy OpenAI shares. I don't think you want to sell Brad, including people who talk with a lot of like breathless concern about our compute stuff or whatever, that would be thrilled to buy shares. So, we could sell your shares or anyone else's to some of the people who are making the most noise on Twitter, wherever, very quickly. We do plan for revenues to grow steeply. Revenue is growing steeply. We are taking a forward bet that it's going to continue to grow, and that not only will ChatGPT keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing. AI that can automate science will create huge value. So, there are not many times that I want to be a public company, but one of the rare times it's appealing is when those people are writing these ridiculous 'OpenAI is about to go out of business and whatever.' I would love to tell them they could just short the stock and I would love to see them get burned on that."

Perhaps a month ago, Sam Altman's response could have been laughed off as childish Musk-like pomposity. Not this week - not now. Folks are beginning to have concerns and questions. Manic AI enthusiasm has started to dim. And while Altman is clearly fixated on OpenAI's stock, everyone else is focused on the company's $1.4 TN of industry commitments....

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