Chip funds fall about 4% before the open after AI chiefs call to slow development

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei on Saturday told the industry it “must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.” OpenAI’s Sam Altman wrote that he agreed the frontier should be paced. Elon Musk, who runs xAI, put it shorter: “Dario is right.” Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis backed a slower pace as well. Monday is the first U.S. session since those comments, and the selling is in chips, not in the rest of what most people own.

Amodei’s essay is easier to trade than to read. He wrote that pacing “does not mean halting model training or technical progress,” and that progress “will still seem fast.” A call to add evaluators is not a cancelled order for the next rack of accelerators. President Trump downplayed the warnings and pointed to competition with China, which is the opposite of a forced pause. The selling in chip funds this morning prices a slower buildout that neither the essay nor the White House has announced.

Semiconductor funds reverse Friday’s lead

As of about 6:55 a.m. Eastern, premarket indications put chip funds down more than 4% and the Nasdaq-100 down about 1.6%, with the S&P 500 and Dow well behind that move.

Marvell Technology, a designer of data-center chips, was indicated 7.2% lower, more than twice chipmaker Nvidia’s 3.0%. Meta Platforms, the buyer whose spending would have to fall for those marks to be more than a weekend, was 0.4% higher.

iShares ASOXX is indicated down more than VanEck ASMH because it holds less Nvidia and more Micron, Intel and Marvell.

State Street’s technology-sector fund AXLK, Friday’s best sector product at +1.3%, was indicated 2.0% lower.

South Korea’s KOSPI drops 3.26%

Seoul already ran a version of this session. The KOSPI closed at 6,684.37, down 3.26%, as of 2:32 a.m. Eastern. Yonhap reported that Samsung Electronics fell 4.05% and SK hynix 6.35%, and quoted Daishin Securities analyst Lee Kyoung-min saying the main factor was the argument over the pace of AI development. CEWY was indicated 4.2% lower in U.S. premarket trading, giving back Friday’s 3.2% gain. European indexes were little changed by 6:55 a.m. Eastern.

WTI at $102.40 as the Fed prepares to meet

Crude is the other pressure, and it does not need an essay. West Texas Intermediate was at $102.40 a barrel, up $2.35, as of about 6:55 a.m. Eastern, after trading as high as $103.84. Brent was at $107.37, up $2.76. The United States Oil Fund BUSO, which holds near-month crude futures, was indicated 1.6% higher; AXLE was indicated 1.2% higher. Oman on Sunday postponed a meeting between Iranian and Gulf-state representatives on the Strait of Hormuz. Oman’s foreign minister said the delay was “in the interests of consensus”; Iran said Saudi Arabia had asked for it. Gold futures were at $4,334 an ounce, down 1.7%. The U.S. dollar index was at 99.30, up 0.18%.

There is no BLS, Census, or BEA release today. The Treasury auctions 13-week and 26-week bills. The Federal Reserve begins a two-day meeting tomorrow, with the decision and press conference on Wednesday. Fed-funds futures imply an 85% chance of a quarter-point increase, the first since July 2023. Friday’s consumer-price index rose 0.4% on the month and 3.4% over the year; the index excluding food and energy was up 2.4% over the year. That print is already on the table. This week’s oil is not.

The chip-fund move sticks only if actual buildout plans change. Meta is next scheduled to report on October 28. Until Amazon, Microsoft, Google or Nvidia says a data-center order has slipped, this morning’s chip-fund prices are a reading of an essay, not of an order book.