AI Stocks Tumble Across Asia as Lab Chiefs Urge Caution on Development
Asian AI and semiconductor shares slid on Monday after top US lab CEOs called for slower development and OpenAI ruled out an IPO this year.
AI-linked shares across Asia fell sharply in early trading on Monday, after the heads of the world's leading artificial intelligence laboratories warned that the pace of model development must be slowed to avert risks to humanity.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei urged AI companies to curb the rate at which they advance model capabilities, citing growing fears of misuse. Elon Musk, who leads xAI, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman both said they shared that view. Altman later stated that OpenAI would not pursue an initial public offering this year, pointing to safety concerns.
The comments weighed heavily on Japanese equities. SoftBank, an OpenAI investor, dropped as much as 13.2% at the open in Tokyo. Memory chipmaker Kioxia fell 9.8%, while chip supply chain firm Tokyo Electron lost 3.7%.
Losses spread across the region's semiconductor sector. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company slipped 1.2% in Taipei. In South Korea, SK Hynix declined 5.3% and Samsung Electronics shed 3.7%.
Chinese AI-related counters also retreated. In Shanghai, memory chipmaker CXMT fell 2.7% and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation dropped 1.4%. In Hong Kong, Zhongji Innolight lost 4.1% and Minimax declined 5.4%. Z.ai, developer of the GLM AI series, tumbled as much as 10.5% following a discounted share placement.
"Selling pressure is likely to hit AI and semiconductor-related stocks in Tokyo following a series of weekend comments calling for a slowdown in the pace of AI development," Takayuki Miyajima, senior economist at Sony Financial Group, said in a note, adding that uncertainty over the Middle East was also weighing on sentiment.
The sell-off followed a threat intelligence report released by San Francisco-based Anthropic on Thursday, which detailed how several actors had used its Claude models for activities including weapons development, cyber operations, surveillance and fraud. Alarm deepened after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, saying the people building AI earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade.
Altman said in an interview that the risk of human extinction posed by AI was unacceptable. While several US lawmakers have raised concerns about the technology's rapid progress and called for new rules, President Donald Trump on Sunday compared AI critics to very negative forces raising scenarios that will not happen, and said he wanted the United States to remain the industry leader.
AI-related trades have driven much of the gains in global equities since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. More recently, cyberattacks by rogue AI agents and public discontent over data centre construction have fuelled opposition to the industry's expansion.
The US and Chinese governments are expected to hold AI safety talks as part of bilateral discussions this month, according to two people briefed on the plans.