Tech Leaders Urge a Slower Pace
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently published an essay advocating for a slower rate of AI model improvement. His argument gained traction quickly after researchers voiced growing safety concerns publicly.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk both publicly backed Amodei’s position. Melius Research’s Ben Reitzes told CNBC that these leaders, while skilled at building models, are not good at talking stocks,
and what they said ended up freaking the market
instead.
The Selloff Across AI Infrastructure
Companies central to the AI infrastructure buildout saw shares drop sharply. Micron, Intel, Marvell Technology, and Applied Materials each fell over 4%, while Nvidia dropped about 3%.
- South Korean memory maker SK Hynix declined 7% in US trading
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise slid approximately 11%
- Dell lost 6%, Oracle lost 4%
- CoreWeave, a data center provider, dropped about 7%
- Data center giants Equinix and Digital Realty Trust declined more than 3%
- Liquid cooling providers like Vertiv dropped around 8%
Cybersecurity Stocks Move the Other Way
The same narrative had the opposite effect on cybersecurity firms, whose job is defending against AI-related attacks. Calls to boost their capabilities intensified after OpenAI revealed an attack on Hugging Face.
Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike both jumped over 13%. Okta, Zscaler, Qualys, SentinelOne, and Netskope also posted double digit gains, with several of these firms actively involved in early testing for unreleased AI models.
The Safety Debate Behind the Selloff
The market shifts coincide with an escalating debate over AI risk. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned out of concern that AI companies are gambling with our lives.
Evan Hubinger, another Anthropic safety researcher, put the odds of AI killing all humans
within a decade at greater than 10%. Those comments ignited significant social media discussion and drew responses from major AI figures within days.
Amodei clarified on Saturday that he is not calling for a complete halt, stating that progress will still seem fast. Altman echoed this on X, saying pacing does not mean stopping,
and that progress should simply be slower than it technically could be, given the costs of safety interventions and monitoring.
Bitcoin Climbs on Separate Regulatory News
While tech stocks fell, Bitcoin gained ground, briefly topping $78,000 before settling near $77,800. Ethereum also gained, trading around $2,500, with XRP showing notable advances.
The rally is tied to growing optimism around the US Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, legislation aimed at establishing clearer federal rules for digital assets. The odds of its passage in 2026 have jumped from 12% to about 30%, according to market reports. Nasdaq futures and gold both declined over the same period, making crypto’s rise stand out even more.
Inference Demand Isn’t Slowing Down
Ben Barringer, global head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot, told CNBC that the underlying pace of change will remain vast regardless of the safety debate. He pointed out that the industry remains short on supply for AI inference, the actual running of AI models day to day.
Demand still far outstrips supply, so even if things are to slow a little, company revenues are unlikely to be impacted,
Barringer said.
Hashlytics Take
The market is treating AI safety concerns and crypto regulation as unrelated stories, but they’re really two bets on the same underlying anxiety: who gets to set the rules before the technology outruns oversight. Investors punished AI infrastructure stocks on fear of a slowdown, then rewarded crypto on hope that regulatory clarity is finally arriving.
Both reactions assume that clearer rules, whether restrictive or permissive, reduce uncertainty. The AI selloff may be overdone given that inference demand isn’t actually softening, but the instinct driving it and the instinct driving Bitcoin’s rally come from the exact same place.
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