AI Stocks Slide as Anthropic Chief Calls for Slower Development
US AI stocks fell on Monday after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slower advances in the technology, putting the outlook for the industry’s infrastructure expansion under renewed scrutiny.
Applied Digital dropped 6.9% to $24.60 and Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) fell 6.9% to $91.83 on Monday after the market opened. Cipher Digital (NASDAQ: CIFR) declined 6.8% to $15.71, while TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) lost 6% to $15.74. Nvidia, whose chips underpin much of the AI buildout, slid 3.9% to $209.78.
The retreat followed a weekend intervention from one of the industry’s biggest buyers of computing capacity. In an essay released Saturday, Amodei argued that safety work needed more time to catch up with increasingly capable systems.
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he wrote. He explicitly distinguished that approach from halting model training or technical progress.
The distinction leaves a central question for infrastructure investors: whether more measured development would change the timing and scale of demand for chips, rented computing power and data-center equipment.
Anthropic’s own commitments illustrate the stakes. In May, the company outlined agreements for as much as five gigawatts of capacity with Amazon and five gigawatts with Google and Broadcom, with the latter beginning to come online in 2027. It also disclosed access to more than 300 megawatts at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 facility. The capacity supports both training and running Claude.
Amodei’s essay did not announce reductions to those commitments. Instead, he proposed outside evaluators embedded within AI companies, common standards among developers in democratic countries and efforts toward international coordination. Anthropic committed to the outside-evaluator step, while broader measures would require cooperation from competitors and governments. Amodei’s essay
The warning also drew support from rivals. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman endorsed pacing development and committed to similar independent oversight, while Elon Musk publicly backed Amodei’s position.
For infrastructure providers, the debate comes against a backdrop of substantial contracted demand and heavy financing costs. CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) reported about $104 billion in revenue backlog at the end of June. Second-quarter revenue more than doubled to $2.58 billion, but net interest expense reached $640 million and its net loss widened to $626 million.
Those commitments provide visibility, though CoreWeave says recognizing backlog as revenue depends on delivering services and making capacity available. A shift in customers’ expansion plans could therefore matter even before it appears in reported sales.
Slower advances in frontier models would not, by themselves, establish that demand for existing AI services is weakening. Anthropic previously linked additional computing capacity to higher customer usage limits. The immediate uncertainty is whether the industry’s new emphasis on restraint will translate into changes to orders and construction schedules—or primarily into longer safety reviews.
