AI Stocks Slide as CEOs Back Amodei Slowdown Call — SkimNews
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- AI stocks sold off globally on Monday after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in AI capability development, with OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk publicly backing the call.
- SoftBank — a major OpenAI investor — fell 10% in Japan; South Korea's SK Hynix dropped more than 6% and Samsung Electronics closed down more than 4%.
- European chip and infrastructure names also slid: ASML fell more than 4%, Infineon dropped more than 6%, Nokia was down around 5%, and data-center-exposed Siemens Energy and Schneider Electric were lower.
- In U.S. premarket trading, Intel dropped nearly 6%, Micron was down around 5%, Nvidia slipped more than 2%, and hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet were all slightly lower.
- The sell-off followed Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon's resignation — he said the labs are "gambling with our lives" — and safety researcher Evan Hubinger's claim of a greater than 10% chance AI will "kill all humans" within the next decade.
- In a Saturday essay, Amodei wrote: "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models"; Altman clarified on X that "pacing" does "not mean 'stopping'" — progress will continue, just at a reduced rate.
Why it matters: Investors have plowed hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expenditure into AI-linked names on assumptions of accelerating growth, so even a slowdown — not a halt — threatens that thesis. RBC Brewin Dolphin's Zoe Gillespie warned equity performance could be impacted if AI growth derails, though Quilter Cheviot's Ben Barringer noted inference demand still outstrips supply, cushioning near-term revenues.
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