AI Stocks Slide as Executives Call for Slower Development

Global stocks tied to artificial intelligence fell sharply on Monday after prominent tech executives called for slowing the pace of AI model development over safety concerns.

Executives back a slowdown in AI capabilities. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Saturday called on artificial intelligence companies to slow the pace at which they advance model capabilities. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he agrees that AI companies need to pace the frontier. Elon Musk, who runs xAI, posted on X that Dario is right.

The comments reflect more cautious expectations after a frenzied race to develop increasingly capable AI models.

AI-related shares drop across regions. Shares of Nvidia fell more than 2% in U.S. premarket trading. Its Magnificent Seven peers Meta and Amazon were down over 1% each. In Asia, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics closed down more than 6% and 4%, respectively. SoftBank fell 10% in Japan.

In Europe, ASML fell more than 4%, Nokia was down around 5%, and Infineon dropped more than 6%. Chipmakers Intel, AMD and Marvell Technology were down nearly 6%, 5% and 6%, respectively. Memory chipmaker Micron was down around 5%.

Futures point to broader market losses. At 04:46 a.m. ET, Nasdaq 100 E-minis fell 505.5 points, or 1.72%. Dow E-minis shed 97 points, or 0.18%, and S&P 500 E-minis were down 53.25 points, or 0.70%. The declines were dragged by a selloff in AI heavyweights.

Software stocks rise amid AI disruption fears. U.S. software stocks climbed as investors weighed concerns that AI could disrupt their businesses. ServiceNow, Adobe and Workday were up 3%, 2.5% and 2.5%, respectively.

Resignations and warnings fuel the debate. Concerns about the potential harm from AI intensified after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned last week. He cited that the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger said he believes that there is a greater than 10% chance AI will kill all humans within the next decade.

Some investors urged skepticism toward such doomsday warnings. Michael Burry posted on X that the warnings were an attempt by major players to stifle smaller competitors. Billions of dollars poured into AI have powered a stratospheric rise in some technology and semiconductor stocks and have been critical to strong equity market gains over the past few years.