Shares of tech companies linked to artificial intelligence (AI) witnessed sharp falls on Monday following calls by AI bosses for a slowdown in the uncontrolled development of the technology.
In South Korea, shares of chipmaker SK Hynix fell 6.4% while Samsung Electronics dropped 4.1%. Japan’s Softbank, which is a major investor in OpenAI, plunged more than 10%.
Tech stocks in Europe also followed the trend, as Germany’s Infineon, which designs and manufactures semiconductors, was down 7.6%, while Dutch chip giant ASML fell 5.2%.
The stocks tumbled after the bosses of Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX called for a slowdown in the “reckless” development, citing fears the technology could soon run out of control.
The South Korean Kospi stock index, which relies heavily on chip makers that supply AI companies, dropped by 3%.
Shares in the big global microchip supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company dropped 1.2%. Futures for the Nasdaq pointed to a 1.3% drop in the tech-heavy index when the US stock market opens.
Stocks of firms threatened by rise of AI witness rally
In contrast, there was a rally in shares of companies that have been threatened by the rise of AI, including the advertising group WPP, which rose by 3.1%, and the analytics business Relx, which rose 4.2%.
Relx stocks fell sharply earlier this year after Anthropic launched a suite of new data and automation tools.
The markets swung after the chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, appealed for the AI industry to “slow down”.
He said that “building too fast is reckless”, warning that a swarm of AI agents could cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage by “taking over the entire internet” in the future.
Some experts dispute claims of Anthropic’s Dario Amodei
Though some experts disputed Amodei’s claims, investors began to price in a slowdown that would make it harder for the industry to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in AI infrastructure.
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, the Google DeepMind chief, Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX boss, Elon Musk, all posted support for Amodei’s essay on slowing AI development, titled “We Must Pace the Frontier”.
Altman added that he would match Amodei’s commitment to embedding outside evaluators within his company to verify safety practices.
Fears continue to grow over the hurried pace and lack of regulation in AI development.
Meanwhile, China’s top intelligence official has warned that the use of AI by adversaries could pose a risk to the country’s political and social security.
Chen Yixin wrote in a government outlet on Sunday that advanced US models such as Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber could pose serious risks to Beijing’s critical information infrastructure, and called for a comprehensive strengthening of AI security.
Conversely, US President Donald Trump rejected the calls to pace AI development. The US president told reporters over the weekend, “We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.”