Tech stocks under pressure after AI turbulence
Following recent AI developments, the stock market reacted with price drops on Monday. The NASDAQ 100, a major tech index on Wall Street, lost 1.2 percent at times, falling to a six-week low. It recovered slightly towards the evening, with a loss of 0.4 percent most recently. SoftBank shares, listed in Tokyo and holding a 13 percent stake in OpenAI, plunged by more than 13 percent before ending the trading day at 5,839 yen ($37.80), a drop of more than 10.7 percent from last week’s closing price.
Continue after ad
Reuters provides an even more detailed overview of the figures: the Philadelphia Chip Index (.SOX) fell by 5.2 percent, Nvidia (NVDA.O) by 3 percent. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) dropped by 4.5 percent, and Micron (MU.O) by 5.4 percent. Semiconductor equipment manufacturers Lam Research (LRCX.O), Applied Materials (AMAT.O), and technology provider Bloom Energy (BE.N) each lost more than 6 percent.
At the start of the trading day, the European technology sector declined by 2.2 percent, weighed down by a 6 percent drop in ASML’s stock price and significant losses at Infineon and Siemens Energy. In Asia, chip manufacturers TSMC and SK Hynix also saw declines.
Recent Turbulences
The price declines come against the backdrop of last week’s developments. First, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced, accompanied by dramatic words on X about it, that safety is not being prioritized enough in AI development and that it could wipe us all out by the end of the decade. On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released a statement in which he called for a slowdown in AI development. The heads of several AI companies agreed with him, directly or indirectly. According to insider reports, discussions about self-commitments have reportedly been ongoing since July in a kind of working group.
The US Congress is now convening on this matter, while Trump has rejected the call for AI regulation. The EU is demanding that AI companies get their models under control. China considers all of this to be fear-mongering. It’s no wonder then that the markets are reacting nervously.
(rie)