AI stocks get drilled because of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's 3,800-word warning

The often-teflon AI trade has officially been rattled.

AI stocks are getting absolutely crushed in premarket trading on Monday after Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) CEO Dario Amodei dropped a gloomy 3,800-word essay that rattled investor confidence across the entire semiconductor and AI infrastructure complex.

Momentum AI names took it on the chin, with Marvell ( MRVL ) and SK Hynix ( SKHY ) each down 7%, CoreWeave ( CRWV ), SanDisk ( SNDK ), Intel ( INTC ), and AMD ( AMD ) all off 6%, Micron ( MU ) and Super Micro ( SMCI ) down 5%.

Even the two most important names in AI — Nvidia ( NVDA ) and Broadcom ( AVGO ) — are sliding 3% before the opening bell.

Within the course of two days, AI titans at Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ), CEO Dario Amodei, and OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ), CEO Sam Altman, have managed to scare the hell out of the human race with the powerful technology they created and pushed their teams full of pioneering super-coders to supercharge.

"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 stated in an essay on Saturday. "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."

Altman said right after the post that he agreed with his rival.

He then followed that up on Monday with a dark X post early on today.

"There are two ways AI progress could go very badly, and that we must avoid," Altman said in an X post around 12:57 am ET. "First, we could lose control of the future to AI. This is unacceptable; we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people. To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities."

He continued, "Second, we could end up in a world with too much concentration of power. If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian. Avoiding these two threats requires walking a narrow middle path; for example, one country could gain too much power. Another example is one lab ending up with too much power."

The framework is really about minimizing security risks — independent reviewers, coordination on safety standards, and international cooperation, Bernstein analyst Madison Rezaei explained in a note.

"At this point, it's not a call for a lowering of capex or stopping model training. However, many investors have started to question what happens if training slows," Rezaei added.