US technology stocks fell sharply on Thursday after a report that OpenAI’s revenue was 20 billion dollars lower than earlier signalled. The Nasdaq dropped 1.3 per cent.

The Financial Times reported that OpenAI told investors its annualised revenue was nearing 50 billion dollars at the end of September. Earlier figures had pointed to about 70 billion dollars.

The gap came from an accounting mismatch. OpenAI’s figure is based on net revenue. Rival Anthropic includes sales through cloud partners such as Amazon and Google, which makes its number look bigger.

Nvidia fell 2.9 per cent, Intel fell 5.3 per cent and Oracle fell 5.5 per cent. The semiconductor ETF dropped about 4 per cent. Analysts called the reaction overblown.

OpenAI declined to comment. The report rattled investors betting on strong AI demand. Anthropic is expected to go public around November, followed by OpenAI next year. The sell-off deepened after the Financial Times report was published midday. The tech sector led declines in the S and P 500, falling nearly 2 per cent. Chip stocks were the hardest hit.