AI Stocks Knocked by CEO Safety Warnings

Global tech and AI-linked stocks fell sharply on Monday after the industry's most influential chief executives called for the pace of AI development to slow down.

Nasdaq 100 futures have gapped lower, setting up a potentially deeper sell-off once Wall Street opens, while SoftBank Group bore the brunt of the selling after Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman both urged the industry over the weekend to pace itself more carefully. The sell-off builds on unease that has been growing since an Anthropic researcher resigned last week, warning that AI labs were gambling with people's lives.

Latest Market Moves

• Nasdaq 100 futures fell as much as 1.4% on Monday, pointing to a weaker Wall Street open after Friday's gains.

• South Korea's Kospi led declines in Asia, sliding 2.5% to 6,739.68 after falling as much as 3.3% intraday.

• SoftBank Group tumbled as much as 13% intraday before closing down 11.2%, its steepest one-day fall since late June.

• Chipmakers were hit hardest across the region, with SK Hynix down 5.3%, Kioxia down 6% and Samsung Electronics down 2.8%.

• Japan's Nikkei 225 slipped 0.8% to 63,474.58, while Europe's ASML fell as much as 4% and Taiwan's TSMC dropped 1.2%.

Amodei and Altman Call for the Industry to Pace Itself

The rout followed a rare moment of agreement between two rival chief executives.

Anthropic's Dario Amodei called over the weekend for leading AI companies to slow the rate at which they improve their models' capabilities, proposing that independent evaluators such as METR be given the kind of access to frontier labs that internal safety teams already have, and that governments help coordinate common safety standards between competing companies.

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei said. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

OpenAI's Sam Altman backed the call within hours. “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” he said, adding that the topic has been “a primary topic of discussions” inside OpenAI in recent weeks.

A Resignation That Set the Tone

The market's nerves were already frayed before Amodei spoke.

Anthropic pretraining researcher Jacob Coxon resigned last week after three years split between OpenAI and Anthropic, warning that the two rivals were “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Coxon said the people building the technology “earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” yet remain locked in a race for fear that a rival will act less responsibly if they step back.

He said he remained optimistic that labs could still agree to pace themselves together, a case that appears to have found some support in Amodei's proposal days later.

SoftBank's OpenAI Bet Turns Into a Bigger Risk

SoftBank had the most riding on Monday's headlines.

The Japanese group has committed roughly $65 billion to OpenAI and expects a stake of around 13% once the ChatGPT maker eventually lists, a payoff that just got harder to time. Altman has said pursuing an initial public offering in the current climate would be “ill-advised,” a signal that pushes the listing toward 2027 rather than this year. The furore also complicates Anthropic's own IPO, which had been expected before the end of the year.

Nasdaq 100 Futures: Sitting at a Pivot

Nasdaq 100 futures gapped down to around 28,943 on Monday, below the 38.2% retracement of the rally from April's low near 24,700 to August's high above 30,700. That level sits inside the broad range that has capped price since May, with a descending trendline from June's highs now – as well as the 50-61.8% ‘golden zone’ - converging on the same area.

A clean break below the base of that range, around 28,000, would open the door to a retest of the April low. Support holding here, with the 14-day RSI at 39 and still someway from oversold, could spell the end of the correction that began in August.

Source: SpreadEx | Nasdaq 100 Futures, Daily Chart