Nvidia’s $5 Trillion Crown Slips as Hyperscalers Go Rogue and OpenAI Misses Its Mark

Nvidia shares fell 8% from a record high as OpenAI revenue concerns and in-house chip development by Amazon and Alphabet threaten its AI dominance, with earnings due May 20.

Nvidia’s stock has been on a rollercoaster ride this week, swinging from a record high to a sharp pullback as competing forces battle for dominance in the AI chip narrative. The company’s shares hit an all-time closing high of $216.61 on April 27, only to slide 8% over the next four sessions to $198.45 by Friday. In euro terms, the stock peaked at €182.26 before retreating to €170.10 — a weekly loss of roughly 4%.

The catalyst for the downturn came from an unexpected corner: OpenAI. A Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday suggested the ChatGPT maker was missing revenue and user targets, casting doubt on the profitability of the sector’s massive AI investments. Nvidia, which in September 2025 announced a deal with OpenAI worth up to $100 billion, has reportedly seen that volume slashed to as low as $30 billion, according to the Financial Times. The stock shed about 3% on the day. OpenAI fired back, calling the report “clickbait” and insisting business was booming.

Yet the OpenAI jitters are only half the story. The real pressure is coming from Nvidia’s own biggest customers. Amazon and Alphabet both reported surging demand for AI computing power — good news on the surface — but revealed they are increasingly turning to in-house chips. Amazon is deploying its Graviton and Trainium processors, while Alphabet has started shipping its Tensor Processing Units directly to select data center clients. That’s a direct challenge to Nvidia’s hardware dominance.

Alphabet’s stock jumped roughly 10% on Thursday, pushing its market cap above $4.6 trillion, while Nvidia now trades below $4.9 trillion. The gap between the two tech titans is narrowing fast.

But the hyperscalers aren’t just building their own chips — they’re also spending like never before. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta are collectively planning roughly $710 billion in capital expenditures this year, a figure that climbed to around $725 billion after Wednesday’s earnings reports. Meta raised its 2026 capex forecast to between $125 billion and $145 billion, adding $10 billion at both ends of the range. Much of that cash flows straight to Nvidia, whose data center revenue hit $62.31 billion in the fourth quarter, up 75% year-over-year, while its networking business surged 263%.

The next big test comes on May 20, when Nvidia reports fiscal first-quarter results. Wall Street expects the company to beat its own revenue guidance of $78 billion, with analysts forecasting $78.5 billion in sales and earnings per share of $1.76. The options market is pricing in a swing of more than 10% by the end of May — direction unknown. If the stock holds support at its 50-day moving average near €160, the broader uptrend remains intact, but the path is anything but clear.

Looking further out, Nvidia is betting on its next-generation Vera-Rubin processors, which promise to slash inference costs by 90% compared to the Blackwell chips. Combined with the Blackwell platform, the company is targeting $1 trillion in cumulative data center sales across 2026 and 2027 — a goal that the May earnings report will need to back up with concrete numbers. For now, Nvidia’s $5 trillion crown is wobbling, but the hyperscalers’ spending spree suggests the king isn’t down yet.