OpenAI’s $500B Empire is Making Wall Street Dance to Its Every Move

With great power comes great responsibility — and OpenAI is wielding its influence to move the stock prices of billion-dollar public companies. The ChatGPT maker just clinched a $500B valuation, overtaking Elon Musk’s SpaceX to become the world’s most valuable startup. That astronomical figure would place OpenAI as the 20th largest publicly traded company if it were listed — and judging by its impact on public markets, it might as well be.

Grabbing Wall Street by the bulls: OpenAI’s footprint has grown so massive that even minor product tweaks or supplier agreements can send companies swinging — even ones whose market caps dwarf (or at least used to) OpenAI’s. Oracle’sORCL

stock jumped 36% in one day after locking in a $300B compute deal with OpenAI, while BroadcomAVGO

jumped 10% in a single day last month on news that it’s teaming up with the AI heavyweight to design custom chips. ChatGPT surpassed 700M weekly active users in Aug. 2025, with shopping-related queries making up a large portion of questions — a shift that could change how people shop.

• This week, EtsyETSY
  surged ~16% after OpenAI unveiled Instant Checkout, allowing users to buy products directly through ChatGPT, with ShopifySHOP
  climbing over 6% on news that its million-plus merchants would soon join the feature.
• Users may also be able to order deliveries directly on ChatGPT soon, as the company began collaborating with StubHubSTUB
  , UberUBER
  , and DoorDashDASH
  on Operator — a tool that lets AI control a user’s web browser.

The Side Companies Don’t Want To Be On

Early in ChatGPT’s rollout, edtech firms like Chegg’sCHGG

stock fell over 90% as students ditched their books for chatbots. And at one point, even investors feared that AI would decimate Google’s advertising revenue — a concern that has since been alleviated. Software companies like HubSpotHUBS

and AtlassianTEAM

are down more than 36% since 2025’s start — as vibe coding tools enabled by OpenAI’s technology allow users to build their own custom software at a fraction of the price. And for RedditRDDT

, ChatGPT has become the gift that stopped giving.

• The stock is down 17% this week as citations in ChatGPT responses plummeted from 9.7% to just 2%, despite having billion-dollar licensing deals in place with AI companies.
• Content publishers are also facing an existential crisis as more people consume their news via chatbots, without having to navigate to sites — circumventing the ads that powered these sites.

Dead internet theory incoming: Whether we like it or not, OpenAI’s coming for social media too. The company launched a standalone Sora app for sharing AI-generated videos, complete with tools that let users create realistic AI avatars and voices. This puts OpenAI in direct competition with TikTok and MetaMETA

, potentially opening new ad revenue streams while forcing incumbents to defend their turf.