Artificial intelligence stocks fell around the world on Monday after industry leaders warned that a slowdown was necessary for the sake of safety.
Meanwhile, another jump in oil prices pushed the bond market to the latest milestone of increased stress, with the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds reaching five percent for the first time since 2023.
Despite all the declines, gains in several non-AI stocks helped limit Wall Street’s losses. The S&P 500 fell 0.6 percent, and more stocks within the index rose than fell. The Nasdaq Composite, which includes many technology stocks, was down 0.9 percent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 159 points, or 0.3 percent, as of 10:20 a.m. ET.
Artificial Intelligence stocks have been under pressure for some time, while their prices have risen significantly on concerns about anxiety around the technology. Concerns jumped to another level over the weekend after one of the industry’s leading voices, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, called for a deliberate, global slowdown in AI development.
He cited safety issues, including the risk that artificial intelligence could be able to command a group of agents that could take over the entire Internet within six to 12 months.
Nvidia, whose profits rose because its chips help train artificial intelligence models, fell 3.5 percent and was the heaviest weight in the market due to its huge size.
SpaceX, which gets a large portion of its business from artificial intelligence, fell 1.7 percent after Elon Musk said over the weekend that he agreed with Amodei. SoftBank Group, the Japanese giant that is a major investor in OpenAI, lost 10.7 percent in Tokyo after OpenAI’s Sam Altman similarly endorsed the slowdown concept.
Altman also said in an interview with Fortune magazine published on Saturday that OpenAI would likely wait until next year to sell its shares on Wall Street, which could delay potential cash flow for Softbank and other early investors in OpenAI.
Get weekly money news
Get expert insights and Q&As on markets, housing, inflation and personal finance information delivered to you every Saturday.
In South Korea, the KOSPI index fell by 3.3 percent due to losses in two of its most influential stocks, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
US President Donald Trump downplayed the importance of his administration validating the development of artificial intelligence, saying he was concerned about ceding America’s advantage over China in a global competition and that a win would help address risks posed by advanced technology.
He said on his social network on Monday that the only guardrail AI needs “is a strong, intelligent president (with a high IQ!) and the United States has that on a massive scale!”
What helped limit Wall Street’s losses on Monday were several software companies that declined earlier this year on concerns that AI-powered competitors could undermine their businesses. Intuit, the company behind TurboTax and QuickBooks, rose 4.8 percent. Shares of Autodesk, whose software helps designers, rose 4.4 percent, and shares of Adobe rose 2.8 percent.
Shares in the oil industry also rose, including a 1.3 percent gain for ExxonMobil, after another jump in crude oil prices.
The price of a barrel of Brent crude rose 4.2 percent to $109.05, as fighting in the Middle East continued to put pressure on global oil flows.
An important Saudi oil pipeline will be out of service for weeks after last week’s attack, two regional officials told The Associated Press. The pipeline provided a way for Saudi Arabia to divert exports to the Red Sea and avoid the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian attacks have choked oil tanker traffic.
Brent crude jumped from less than $72 in early July as doubts grew that the United States and Iran could reach an agreement that would allow oil tankers to exit the Persian Gulf freely through the strait again.
While the prospect of de-escalating the war in Iran has diminished, Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey, commodities strategists at ING, wrote in a commentary on Monday that the situation remains fluid and significant amounts of oil are still moving through the strait.
So far, the jump in oil prices has helped push the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline across the country to nearly $4.32 from $4.08 a month ago and $3.18 a year ago, according to AAA.
Such upward pressure on inflation has many on Wall Street anticipating that the Federal Reserve will raise its key interest rate on Wednesday at the end of its next meeting.
This is the traditional way the Fed tries to rein in high inflation. Such a move then trickles down to the rest of the bond market, makes borrowing money more expensive for American households and businesses, slows the overall economy and weakens investment prices.
Hopefully, this will remove some of the inflation fuel, although Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates rather than higher ones.
Along with high inflation, concerns about rising U.S. and other governments’ debt have helped send long-term Treasury yields to their highest levels in years.
The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds rose to five percent from 4.96 percent late Friday and just 3.97 percent before the war with Iran began in February.
The jump has already increased the cost of borrowing for US households and businesses, including the highest average long-term mortgage interest rate in more than 14 months.
& Edition 2026 The Canadian Press
