Wall Street pushes back on Anthropic's warning as AI spending expected to roll on: Chart of the Day

Semiconductor stocks took a leg lower on Monday after Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) CEO Dario Amodei issued a public plea to "slow down the AI industry."

The call was echoed by OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ) CEO Sam Altman and even his nemesis, SpaceX ( SPCX ) and Tesla ( TSLA ) CEO Elon Musk, who voiced his agreement .

But Wall Street analysts say the AI train has left the station, with no slowdown in development or spending in sight.

"Nobody's actually slowing anything down," D.A. Davidson tech analyst Gil Luria told Yahoo Finance on Monday.

He said of the bleak warnings from Anthropic and OpenAI titans to "pace the frontier" of artificial development: "I just doubt their motivations … they're demanding regulation to stifle competition."

Luria said that even if development were to decelerate, the big-spending hyperscalers "will be fine."

"Let's say they did overbuild over the next year or two," Luria said. "They can just sit on that, absorb the extra capacity, and their cash flow will actually skyrocket."

AI infrastructure spending from hyperscaler heavyweights like Alphabet ( GOOG , GOOGL ), Amazon ( AMZN ), Meta ( META ), and Microsoft ( MSFT ) has ballooned in the past five years, as shown in Yahoo Finance's AlphSpace chart below.

The four major companies' capital expenditures total $293 billion across just the first two quarters of 2026. Meta had the most dramatic ramp, up 58% quarter over quarter, while Amazon and Google also accelerated spending.

Together, these four companies are on pace to spend nearly $600 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone, according to AlphaSpace data.

Besides the Big Tech players, the AI trade has been the main driver of the stock market and economy.

"The AI genie is out of the bottle," said Nancy Tengler, CEO and chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments." She added, "The technology has already spread across sectors."

President Trump rejected calls for guardrails on AI models, pointing out that the US is winning the AI race against China.

"With China in the race, though, we don't expect any major slowdown," when it comes to AI development, said Giuseppe Sette, co-founder and president of Reflexivity.

As for any retracement in AI stocks, "that's simply a buying opportunity," he added.

Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance.