Dec 12 (Reuters) – Oracle on Friday denied a media report that it was slowing OpenAI-related data centers, following investor concerns about its debt-fueled AI infrastructure. Earlier in the day, Bloomberg News reported that Oracle pushed back completion dates for some data centers it is developing for OpenAI to 2028, a year later than planned, due to labor and material shortages. “There have been no delays for any sites required to meet our contractual obligations, and all milestones remain on track,” Oracle spokesman Michael Egbert told Reuters in an emailed statement. “We remain fully aligned with OpenAI and confident in our ability to deliver against both our contractual obligations and future expansion plans,” Egbert added. Shares of Oracle, which fell 3.6% after the report, pared losses, falling 2.8% in afternoon trade. Other AI-related stocks also tumbled, with chip giant Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Micron and Arm Holdings falling between 2% and 4.5%. The Bloomberg report came a day after Oracle posted its biggest share drop since late January, following earnings that showed rising spending and a bleak outlook for a company increasingly reliant on OpenAI. Oracle, long a smaller cloud computing player, jumped into the artificial intelligence infrastructure race this year on the back of a $300 billion OpenAI data center deal. But the build-out forced the company to borrow aggressively. Investors, spooked in recent weeks by signs that Google is moving ahead in the AI ​​race and by Oracle’s mounting debt load, have sold the company’s shares and bonds. The cost of insuring Oracle’s debt against default rose to the highest in at least five years on Thursday and rose again on Friday. The stock is now up just 13% for the year, having erased all the gains from a 36% jump in September, when it reported a massive backlog of more than $450 billion — mostly tied to OpenAI. Investors have become pickier in the AI ​​space, with less willingness to indiscriminately reward spending on AI, even as they bet on its long-term potential. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. After the Bloomberg report, some analysts said the news showed bottlenecks emerging beyond chips for the data center expansion that technology companies are financing with hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. “Concerns about the ability to build data centers due to construction delays, power availability and other practical factors are becoming a much bigger factor than anticipated demands for AI capabilities,” said Bob O’Donnell, principal analyst at TECHnalysis Research. But he added that the market has become more sensitive to news of AI delays as investors examine the payoffs of the spending. Broadcom also fell more than 11% on Friday after it warned that surging sales of lower-margin custom AI processors were hurting profitability, fueling fears that the business could be less profitable. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City, additional reporting by Arnav Mishra and Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Alan Barona)