Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq futures fall as Anthropic's AI warning spooks tech traders, oil prices jump
US stock futures sank on Monday morning after the two leading frontier artificial intelligence companies called for an industrywide slowdown of AI development , sending tech stocks tumbling. Rising oil prices and an upcoming Fed meeting this week also put pressure on stocks.
Futures on the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 ( NQ=F ) fell 1.6%, led by losses in chip stocks, including Nvidia ( NVDA ). Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average ( YM=F ) fell 0.2%, while those on the S&P 500 ( ES=F ) declined by 0.7%. In Asia, shares of memory chip makers SK Hynix ( SKHY ) and Samsung ( 005930.KS ) dropped.
Tech stocks were poised to fall after Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) CEO Dario Amodei wrote a 3,800-word essay over the weekend, arguing that AI companies should slow the pace of improving AI models in order to address safety concerns . Sam Altman, the CEO of rival AI lab OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ), agreed in a post on X, putting the two AI companies at odds with Wall Street, which has banked on a brisk pace of improvement.
Worries about AI safety also led OpenAI to delay its initial public offering until 2027, Altman told Fortune. Anthropic still plans to list in the fall and has reportedly chosen the Nasdaq for its highly anticipated IPO.
Oil prices, meanwhile, continued to climb after Saudi Arabia shut down a key pipeline in the Middle East and as the war in the Middle East spread. Brent crude ( BZ=F ) traded near $108 per barrel.
That sets the stage for the Federal Reserve's policy meeting on Wednesday. Trader bets of a Fed rate hike spiked to 86% following Friday's consumer inflation report , creating a consensus even as Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh has emphasized that he will not provide forward guidance about the Fed policymaking.
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Over the weekend, a 3,800-word essay from Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) CEO Dario Amodei sent a shockwave through the AI industry. And when OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ) CEO Sam Altman agreed, it sent market watchers into a frenzy.
"Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence, not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up," Amodei said. "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain."
"I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier," Altman concurred. "This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon.
The announcements came amid heightened AI safety concerns following two researchers' posts about the dangers of advanced frontier AI models. Last week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced his resignation , saying that AI "could kill us all by the end of the decade" and that Anthropic and OpenAI were not taking that threat seriously enough.
The announcements also risk drawing pushback from President Trump and lawmakers, particularly as Anthropic and OpenAI are seen as integral to the US's race with China to dominate the AI industry.
"I have concerns that if we don't win A.I., we're going to be put in a very bad position," Trump said on Thursday, per the New York Times.
