Chip Stocks Tumble After AI Leaders Call For Slowdown in AI Development

By Sherry Qin and Adria Calatayud

European chip stocks followed Asian peers lower, after leaders of the world's biggest AI companies called for the industry to slow development of the technology for safety reasons.

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei called for the AI industry to slow down development of frontier AI models to provide sufficient time to ensure it is being done safely in an essay over the weekend.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Fortune, Sam Altman said OpenAI likely wouldn't go public this year given all the safety concerns. "I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don't feel pressure on that."

Shortly after the European opening bell on Monday, shares in Dutch semiconductor-equipment giant ASML Holding fell 4.3%, while those in smaller peers ASM International and BE Semiconductor Industries dropped more than 5%.

European chipmakers Infineon Technologies and STMicroelectronics were down 6.3% and 3.9%, respectively. Other European companies in the semiconductor supply chain fell sharply as well, with France's Soitec and Germany's Aixtron leading declines in the Stoxx Europe 600 index.

In Asia, tech investor Softbank Group, one of OpenAI's biggest backers, closed 11% lower Monday. Flash memory maker Kioxia Holdings fell 6.4%. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract chip maker, declined 1.2%.

South Korean chip giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics fell 6.4% and 4.1%, respectively, sending the country's benchmark Kospi index down 3.3%.

Asia's tech selloff looks like a knee-jerk reaction to the headline, analysts said.

"AI valuations assume not only strong demand but also a relentless pace of model development," said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Markets. With oil prices and bond yields elevated amid heightened Middle East tensions, investors already have less tolerance for any challenges to those expectations, she added.

However, slowing the pace of development for the next frontier model won't necessarily slow down the AI investment cycle.

"The next leg of AI demand may depend less on how often new models are trained, and more on how intensively they are used," said Tiger Brokers market strategist James Ooi. Also, the next phase of AI compute demand, which may be largely driven by inference and agentic workloads, could continue to support hardware and infrastructure providers.

Still, analysts have issued warnings about AI hardware makers' accelerating production expansion plans. Samsung and SK Hynix have planned to invest more than $500 billion in a new chip-making hub in South Korea to significantly expand their manufacturing capacity. In Japan, Kioxia and Sandisk are investing more than $31 billion to drive the large-scale supply of flash memory chips.

"Memory, including high-bandwidth memory, could face an oversupply risk if new capacity arrives before demand," Chanana said.

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

Write to Sherry Qin at sherry.qin@wsj.com and to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 14, 2026 03:42 ET (07:42 GMT)