Dario Amodei's AI slowdown call rattles stocks

The selloff followed a rare public alignment between two rival AI lab chiefs. Anthropic's Dario Amodei used a 3,800-word essay on Saturday to argue that fully addressing AI risks requires pacing capability advancement so that risk prevention can keep up. OpenAI's Sam Altman said he agreed, then escalated early Monday with an X post warning of two ways AI progress could go badly: losing control of the future to AI, and ending up with too much concentration of power.

The market reaction was immediate and broad. Marvell and SK Hynix each fell 7% in pre-market trading, while CoreWeave, SanDisk, Intel, and AMD were all off 6%. Micron and Super Micro dropped 5%, and even Nvidia and Broadcom — the two most important names in AI — slid 3%. The declines hit momentum names hardest, suggesting investors are recalibrating the pace of near-term AI infrastructure spending rather than abandoning the theme outright.

What happens next hinges on whether Amodei's call for prudence translates into concrete changes — independent reviewers, coordinated safety standards, or international cooperation, as Bernstein's Madison Rezaei noted. If it remains commentary, the selloff may prove short-lived. If it signals a genuine industry slowdown, the companies most exposed to AI capital expenditure could face a more prolonged reset.