How OpenAI Trimmed $50 Billion off Alphabet’s Market Cap on Monday

The market is up today, but Alphabet(NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) shares traded as much as 2.8% lower in early trading, cutting more than $50 billion off the company’s valuation. The stock recovered slightly but it was still down 2% at 11 a.m. ET.

OpenAI stirs the pot

Artificial intelligence (AI) rival OpenAI is holding an event at 1 p.m. ET today and is expected to release a new product. But it’s not clear what that product will be after CEO Sam Altman tweeted late last week that it wouldn’t be a search engine.

OpenAI and its partner Microsoft have been working to disrupt Google search for years with little success. And with Microsoft now launching services with other AI models, OpenAI needs to find a way to engage both developers and users on its terms. We will see what they introduce,…