Key Points
Few companies exert a bigger influence on the artificial intelligence (AI) industry than OpenAI. The AI lab is at the forefront of developing large language models with its GPT models, and it’s planning to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on computing capacity to train those models and serve its user base.
But that spending plan now has a huge question mark after a report surfaced that the company missed its internal benchmarks on both revenue and user growth at the end of 2025. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar has reportedly expressed concerns about being able to afford its current contracts for computing resources if revenue doesn’t pick up. That report weighed heavily on OpenAI’s biggest cloud infrastructure partners as well as semiconductor stocks.
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But not every company in the AI ecosystem will see OpenAI’s shortfall as bad news. Two companies in particular could be big winners as a result: Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN).
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Signs of success for other AI labs
One reason for OpenAI’s potential shortfall in user and revenue growth could be that both Google and Anthropic are taking market share from the AI leader. Google’s release of Gemini 3 last fall was seen as a major competitive threat to OpenAI.
CEO Sam Altman reportedly issued a “Code Red” in a memo after Gemini outperformed his company’s leading model in numerous benchmark tests. Apple opted to partner with Google for its Siri revamp coming this year after abandoning its own AI model.
Meanwhile, a series of releases from Anthropic focusing on enterprise-level solutions has led to tremendous success. After releasing Claude Code last year, which is designed to help software developers write code faster, it built on that foundation this year with Claude Cowork for more general knowledge work. It also developed solutions for cybersecurity, finance, and legal issues, among others.
Anthropic’s recent success has led to more businesses paying for its services, reaching 30.6% of U.S. companies, according to a survey from Ramp, which helps businesses improve their financial operations. That’s quickly approaching the 35.2% that pay for OpenAI, a level that’s been fairly stable for the past year.
Both Alphabet and Amazon own stakes in Anthropic and recently increased their investments. Amazon added $5 billion to its existing stake with the option to add $20 billion more. Alphabet added $10 billion to its investment, with the option to add another $30 billion later. Both companies already held stakes that could be worth more than $50 billion at Anthropic’s most recent valuation.
Those recent investments come with computing commitments from Anthropic, indicating the OpenAI competitor needs more computing capacity. So while OpenAI may be looking to pare back its spending if it doesn’t ramp up revenue, these two cloud giants could make up for it with Anthropic’s commitments.
Opening up new opportunities
The timing of the report about OpenAI’s missed targets coincides with a major update in OpenAI’s agreement with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). The two have loosened ties with each other over the years, with Microsoft relaxing its exclusivity with OpenAI considerably.
The most recent amendment to their agreement removes the exclusivity of OpenAI products and models on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. In exchange, Microsoft no longer pays a revenue share to OpenAI.
That opened the door for OpenAI to partner with Amazon and Google beyond infrastructure deals, potentially creating new revenue opportunities for the company. Sure enough, the next day, Amazon announced the latest versions of GPT are available in limited preview through its Amazon Bedrock platform. OpenAI’s coding agent, Codex, is also available.
That’s an excellent development for both Alphabet and Amazon, as it gives their customers more options. That said, they’ve both built significant ecosystems around Gemini (Alphabet) and Claude (Amazon), and many customers may not switch. But Amazon, as the largest public cloud provider, could see a considerable benefit from customers consolidating their cloud computing needs now that it also has access to OpenAI services.
OpenAI’s shortfall in revenue and user growth may be just a hiccup as it maintains its position at the forefront of AI development. But for investors looking to capitalize on the relative performance of the competition, Alphabet and Amazon look like great opportunities right now.
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Adam Levy has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
