Shares of Asian chipmakers fell on Monday amid renewed concerns about the pace of artificial intelligence development, after OpenAI paused training, evaluation, and inference using tools for its most capable models while it works to strengthen safety controls.
Shares of South Korea’s SK Hynix fell by 4.80%, Samsung Electronics shares dropped by 4.60%, and Japan’s Kioxia Holdings shares declined by 2.30%.
In China, shares of Cambricon Technologies fell 5.70%, Luxshare Precision lost 4.90%, SMIC declined 3.60%, and NAURA Technology dropped 3.30%. Semiconductor Manufacturing International and other AI-related companies also saw their share prices decline.
This sell-off came in the wake of renewed debate over whether safety concerns might slow the development of increasingly capable AI models, potentially impacting the pace of investment in the chips, servers, and data centers that form the backbone of AI infrastructure.
OpenAI reported that the latest training pause followed a security incident related to an internal research model, noting that the largest planned reinforcement learning operation on the frontier remains on hold pending a review of safety safeguards.
The weakness extended to major Asian markets with significant technological weight; South Korea’s KOSPI index fell by 2.30%, China’s CSI 300 index declined by 2%, and the Shanghai Composite index fell by 1.50%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose by 0.70%, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell by 0.10%.
The Taiwanese stock market was closed on Monday for the September 28 public holiday commemorating Confucius's birth and Teacher's Day, so shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and other major Taiwanese chip manufacturers did not trade.
These latest concerns add to an ongoing debate about the sustainability of the massive investment cycle in artificial intelligence. Earlier this month, executives including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodey and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman endorsed calls for a more conservative pace of AI development, triggering a sharp sell-off in chip stocks.
Meanwhile, the long-term spending outlook remains unclear, as Chinese technology firms continue to expand their domestic AI infrastructure, with Alibaba unveiling plans for a much larger AI model and new in-house AI chips.
