Bearish AI Headlines: An Artificial Wave of Panic

Misleading AI Headlines Drag Down Memory Names

Over the past few weeks, three bearish AI headlines have dragged down the industry and sparked fear, uncertainty, and doubt among investors. Although short-term price action has been negative and bears have been in control, the headlines are misleading or downright inaccurate. Below are the three headlines:

1.      “OpenAI’s Annualized Revenue Nears $50B, Below Earlier $70B Reports”: Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI’s recent revenue growth was $20 billion below what Wall Street had expected. However, the article’s editor failed to account for how OpenAI calculates revenue. In reality, the $70 billion revenue figure was never revised down, it was a completely different number. The $70 billion annualized revenue reported in late September by Axios and Reuters included enterprise sales, which more than doubled since July. Conversely, the FT’s $50 billion OpenAI revenue figure did not include the full value of sales through cloud partners. In other words, nothing has changed. The $70 billion gross revenue and $50 billion net revenue remained the same, signaling that OpenAI’s business is still growing rapidly.

2.      “Meta Muse Growth Plateaus”: Recent headlines suggest that Meta Platform’s (META) agentic AI platform “Muse” is seeing sluggish growth. However, data show that Muse is growing faster than any AI platform since ChatGPT launched in late 2022.

3.      “Why this Little Known Chinese Chipmaker Has Caused a Global Stock Rout”: Earlier this week, memory-related stocks like Micron (MU), SK Hynix (SKHY), and SanDisk (SNDK) fell amid reports that China-based ChangXin Memory Technologies has made progress on new architecture that will increase memory density on its AI chips. Memory stocks have soared over the past few years as demand has dramatically overwhelmed supply. While a higher memory supply is bearish for names like Micron, investors have overreacted for a few reasons. First, CXMT has difficulty accessing chipmaking equipment from companies like ASML (ASML) due to U.S. export controls. Second, the legacy memory makers still have a wide technological advantage over CXMT. In other words, companies are unlikely to dump SKHY or MU in favor of CXMT technology.

Bottom Line

Short-term headline noise has led to bearish price action among AI leaders. However, misinterpreted revenue metrics, overstated platform slowdowns, and exaggerated competitive threats have created an artificial wave of panic.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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