Key OpenAI investor, Softbank's shares fell more than 10% in Asia, leading a slump in major artificial intelligence-linked stocks across global markets on Monday amid growing calls for a development slowdown from leading labs like Anthropic and OpenAI amid warnings that rapid development of the technology may pose an existential threat to humans.
U.S. futures were down early on Monday, led by a 1.6% drop in the tech-heavy Nasdaq futures index.
AI chipmaking giant Nvidia's shares fell 2.13% in the premarket to $213.84, while rival chipmakers AMD, Intel and Qualcomm's shares fell 4.77%, 5.29% and 4.11% respectively.
Shares of memory chipmaker Micron, which have surged more than 240% since the start of the year amid an AI-driven demand boom, fell 5% to $926.
The Tokyo-listed shares of Softbank, which owns a 13% stake in OpenAI, slumped more than 13% before ending the days trading at ¥5,839 ($37.80)—more than 10.7% down from last week's close.
South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index also fell more than 3.2%, as shares of memory chipmakers—whose earnings have soared amid the AI boom—Samsung and SKHynix fell 4% and 6.3% respectively.
In Europe, shares of Dutch semiconductor giant ASML, which manufacturers the machines used to produce chips, fell 4.53%.
According to our estimates, the net worth of Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder and CEO of SoftBank Group, fell by more than $8 billion to $72.5 billion amid Monday's rout. Son fell from 27th to 29th on the list of the world's wealthiest people and is now the fourth richest Asian on the list behind India's Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani and ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com