AI Stocks Drop on Amodei's Slowdown Call — SkimNews
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- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed over the weekend slowing frontier model development, prompting a selloff in AI infrastructure stocks on Monday; Amodei clarified a slowdown wouldn't mean "halting model training or technical progress."
- GE Vernova dropped nearly 9%, Caterpillar sank more than 4%, Vertiv fell close to 8%, and Oracle slipped almost 4% on Monday in response.
- RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria told CNBC a slowdown in model development and training would likely be a headwind for Oracle's cloud infrastructure business, which has driven the stock.
- Oracle has laid off employees in slower-growth areas and poured billions into compute and data centers over the past 18 months, while neoclouds Nebius and CoreWeave have become central compute suppliers to hyperscalers.
- Amazon raised roughly $6 billion in debt last week and Alphabet raised about $10 billion in a May euro bond sale, as hyperscalers rush to lock in AI financing ahead of an expected six-week debt push amid a "burgeoning nationwide backlash" against data centers.
- Fixed income investors are demanding significantly higher rates on new AI-related debt deals priced this fall compared to prior issuances, according to a source familiar with the private talks.
Why it matters: One CEO's weekend essay moved GE Vernova 9%, Oracle 4%, and triggered a broader repricing of the entire AI infrastructure chain in a single session. Hyperscalers like Amazon and Alphabet now face higher borrowing costs to fund multi-billion-dollar AI commitments at exactly the moment a growing public backlash against data centers is squeezing the buildout from the demand side.
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