Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, at the company’s Builder Summit in Bangalore, India, on February 16, 2026.
Samyukta Lakshmi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Global AI stocks fell on Monday after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in the development of AI capabilities, a proposal echoed by other major tech players.
In Asia, South Korean giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics fell more than 6% and 4%, respectively. shares of Softbankone of the biggest investors in OpenAI, fell 10% in Japan.
In Europe, AI-related stocks such as semiconductors fell sharply in early trading. Major chip equipment manufacturer ASML It fell more than 4%, but nokia It was down about 5%, but infineon It fell more than 6%. Other companies that have a business relationship with building data centers. siemens energy and schneider electricwas also low.
Major stocks also fell in pre-market trading in the United States. memory chip manufacturers micron It was down about 5%, but intel Although it decreased by nearly 6%, Nvidia It was over 2% cheaper. Several other semiconductor stocks also fell. hyperscalers etc. microsoft, Amazon and alphabet All were slightly lower.
Year-to-date stock prices for Nvidia, ASML, and SoftBank.
The decline comes as debate over the risks posed by rapidly improving AI model capabilities reached a fever pitch last week after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who also previously worked at OpenAI, announced he was resigning over concerns that Anthropic and OpenAI were “putting our lives on the line.”
In contrast, human safety researcher Evan Hubinger said he believed there was a more than 10% chance that AI would “kill all humans” within the next 10 years.
The post caused an uproar on social media and led to reactions from major AI leaders. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei penned an essay on Saturday calling for a slowdown in the pace of development of AI capabilities.
“We have to slow down the pace at which we improve the capabilities of our AI models,” Amodei said.
Technology industry leaders support economic slowdown
Mr. Amodei’s essay sparked a rare consensus among leaders of Anthropic’s rival companies. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Saturday that he agrees with Amodei that AI companies need to “keep pace with the frontier.”
space x CEO Elon Musk, who has been sounding the alarm about the risks posed by AI for several years, posted on X that “Dalio is right.”
Investors are concerned that a slowdown in the pace of AI development across industries could impact the adoption of AI technology and have knock-on effects across companies.
Zoe Gillespie, senior director at RBC Brewin Dolphin, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday that “the rally in the stock market has been based on the growth of AI and productivity gains…so if that starts to derail, that could impact future stock performance.”
“Certainly, much of what we consider in terms of stock returns is built into the future earnings growth of these companies, and when that is threatened, things can become volatile.”
