OpenAI is the hot buzzword on corporate earnings calls
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It's not enough to talk about AI in general on earnings calls anymore. OpenAI in particular is the new buzzword, with 31 mentions on major corporate earnings transcripts so far this quarter, per an analysis by AlphaSense.
Why it matters: It signifies OpenAI's growing dominance over not just the AI ecosystem, but the market as a whole.
Zoom in: OpenAI sits at the center of the biggest tech companies powering the S&P 500.
- It has partnerships with Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, CoreWeave, Oracle and Broadcom.
- These partnerships could evolve into "coopetition" as OpenAI is working to vertically integrate, working to design its own chips and build out its own data center capacity.
- It also acquired Jony Ive's design firm, io, to develop its own line of AI-native consumer devices, signaling the creation of an AI ecosystem OpenAI is primed to own.
By the numbers: Four times in the past two months, announcements of OpenAI-related deals sent shares of Oracle, Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom soaring.
- That boosted the combined market value of these stocks by $630 billion in just one day of trading after each reveal, according to FactSet and the Wall Street Journal.
- OpenAI came up 19 times on Microsoft's earnings call Wednesday evening, versus just three times in its July earnings.
- That's in part because Microsoft reported a quarterly loss of roughly $4 billion that it attributed to its share of OpenAI's losses.
Yes, but: The topic of AI broadly speaking still gets the most attention, with 228 mentions for companies valued over $10 billion since this earnings season began.
What we're watching: OpenAI's own path to quarterly earnings through going public.
- The company is laying the groundwork to go public at a $1 trillion valuation, according to Reuters.
- That's a hefty number given that the company is on track to generate around $13 billion of revenue this year and lose almost $20 billion, Gil Luria, managing director at the investment firm D.A. Davidson, tells Axios. Companies often go public without being profitable, however.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that he wants to spend trillions of dollars on AI, and that kind of capex could all but require the company to go public to raise cash.
