Stocks fell on Monday morning, led by technology shares, as top executives in the artificial intelligence industry called for slowing the development of this revolutionary technology. In early trading on Monday, the Nasdaq 100 index, which tracks 100 large non-financial companies on the Nasdaq stock exchange, dropped by 1.3 percent. The larger Nasdaq Composite index also fell by 0.9 percent, and the S&P 500 declined by about 0.6 percent.
Impact on Major Tech Companies
Nvidia's stock, recognized as the most valuable public company in the world, fell by more than 3 percent. Chipmakers Arm Holdings, Marvell, and Intel saw declines of over 5 percent. Applied Materials, a key supplier for chip companies, dropped by 6 percent, and Micron Technologies' stock fell by the same amount. Stocks of AMD and Intel also decreased by about 5.5 percent. Amazon's shares, known as a leader in cloud services, fell by more than 1 percent. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average only dropped by 120 points, but Caterpillar's stock, which is active in AI data center construction, fell nearly 4 percent.
Read more: Oil prices rise after shutdown of vital Saudi pipeline
CEO Warnings and Market Concerns
The sharp market decline occurred after Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, stated in an interview that his company would not go public this year. He said, “Given everything that is happening, now is not the right time to go public.” Altman noted that “the progress has been rapid and will continue,” but we must proceed with caution.
In South Korea, concerns about slowing the AI industry led to a drop of over 3 percent in the Kopsi index. This decline was primarily due to the sell-off of AI memory companies. Stocks of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell by 5 and 7.3 percent, respectively. In Tokyo, shares of SoftBank Group, which invests in OpenAI, dropped by 10.7 percent.
In Europe, the trend of selling shares of AI-related companies continued, with Germany's DAX index falling by 0.6 percent and France's CAC 40 index dropping by 0.8 percent. The largest declines in European markets were related to AI-related companies, such as Belgium's ASML, which fell by 9.5 percent.
Read more: Fuel prices rise due to escalating conflicts in the Middle East · Anthropic's public release focuses on slowing artificial intelligence
