Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s estimated net worth sunk back below the $200 billion mark as tech stocks broadly jolted downward on a report OpenAI’s annualized revenue is far short of prior estimates, which also took a notable chunk out of fellow centibillionaire Larry Ellison’s fortune.
Key Takeaways
- Nvidia shares fell 3% on Thursday afternoon, trading at $230.48 at market close, while Ellison’s Oracle dropped 5.6%, trading at $135.55.
- Both sharply dropped after the Financial Times reported OpenAI told investors annualized revenue was around $50 billion at the end of September, not the $68 billion figure previously reported.
- Other outlets have reported the $68 billion figure included gross revenue from its partners and reflected firms’ efforts to compare OpenAI’s revenue to Anthropic’s, citing sources familiar with the documents the FT obtained.
- Ellison, Oracle’s chairman, chief technology officer and cofounder, owns around 40% of the company and lost $8.9 billion on Thursday.
- Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, president and cofounder, owns around 4% of the company and lost $6.1 billion.
- Other tech stocks also fell on the news, with Intel down over 5% and CoreWeave down almost 7%.
Key Background
OpenAI’s Sam Altman announced in September the company would not go public in 2026, going against Wall Street bankers, experts and retail investors’ predictions.
Though a private company, the report that its annualized revenue was $20 billion lower than previously signaled as of September pushed tech stocks down on persistent fears about the AI spending spree not producing revenue to justify the expenditures.
Nvidia and Oracle are both heavily tied to OpenAI, as the company gets graphics processing units from Nvidia and cloud computing power from Oracle.
Forbes Valuation
Huang sits in No. 7 on Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list with an estimated net worth of $199.3 billion, having lost around 3% of his wealth on Thursday. Ellison holds the No. 8 spot, with an estimated net worth of $176.8 billion, down over 4.5% for the day.
They hold the No. 3 and No. 2 spots, respectively, on Forbes’ ranking of billionaires who lost the most for the day, coming behind Elon Musk, who lost over $30 billion, taking away his trillionaire status.
Tangent
Nvidia’s stock drop comes as the company nears a $6 trillion market capitalization after it became the first to be valued at $5 trillion.
The company’s revenue has exploded alongside demand for its data-center chips, generating $96.2 billion in revenue in its second quarter, up 106% from a year earlier, and forecasting $108 billion, plus or minus 2%, for the current quarter.
Its data center business alone generated $89 billion in quarterly revenue, up 117% year over year and accounting for around 92% of the company’s total revenue. OpenAI has been crucial for Nvidia’s success, driving demand for Nvidia’s hardware.
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