Bitcoin Climbs as AI Slowdown Calls Sink Nvidia, Intel and Other Chip Stocks

In brief

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called on AI labs to deliberately slow capability gains for safety reasons; OpenAI's Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk both said they agree.
• Nvidia, Intel, AMD and Marvell led a chipmaker selloff Monday, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down almost 6%.
• Bitcoin climbed as high as $78,280, adding nearly 2% since midnight UTC, while gold, silver, and most AI-linked stocks fell.

The growing calls for an AI slowdown, many of which coming from within the industry itself, are sending shockwaves throughout the market, sinking AI-related stocks.

Meanwhile, crypto is so far unaffected, with Bitcoin today climbing—perhaps partly due to bullish regulatory news as the Clarity Act gets a second life.

Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy essay called "We Must Pace the Frontier,” arguing the AI industry needs to deliberately slow how fast it improves model capabilities. He pointed to two recent developments behind his shift: recursive self-improvement accelerating progress industry-wide, and an OpenAI-Hugging Face agent-swarm incident he treats as a warning sign.

Within a day, OpenAI's Sam Altman and xAI owner Elon Musk both said publicly that they agreed.