SoftBank Group shares fell more than 10 percent in Tokyo on Monday after OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman backed Anthropic’s call for the AI industry to slow development until safety measures catch up. The drop made the Japanese investment conglomerate the worst performer on the Nikkei 225, which closed down 1.51 percent at 63,045, a six-week low.
Altman endorsed the position laid out over the weekend by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who argued the industry needs to give safety measures time to keep pace with model capabilities. Altman went further in an interview with Fortune published Saturday, saying OpenAI would not pursue its initial public offering this year as the company focuses on safety work. Both companies are private but are widely expected to list in the months ahead, which keeps their governance choices in the market spotlight even without public shares.
Dan Baker of Morningstar said the share price slide probably reflects the possibility that AI development may be slowed by regulators trying to avoid the worst-case outcomes that Anthropic and OpenAI have discussed. He added that any further examples of loss of control in newer AI models could also slow development. In other words, the market is not pricing a single event but a distribution of regulatory and incident risks that all point the same direction.
The selloff spread across Asian chip stocks
Other AI-linked names fell across the region. In Seoul, SK Hynix, the memory supplier at the center of the HBM boom, lost 5.3 percent. Samsung Electronics dropped 2.8 percent. Tokyo Electron, Japan’s chip equipment maker, fell 0.9 percent and memory maker Kioxia Holdings sank 6 percent.
Not every market followed. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.1 percent to 8,747.60 and Taiwan’s Taiex slipped 0.6 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.5 percent to 24,687, its fourth straight losing session, weighed down more by oil and rate concerns than by the AI story.
| Market | Move Monday | Driver |
|---|---|---|
| Nikkei 225 | -1.51% to 63,045 | SoftBank -11.2%, AI safety warnings |
| Hang Seng | -0.5% to 24,687 | Oil, rate worries, fourth loss in a row |
| SK Hynix | -5.3% | AI supply chain selloff |
| Samsung Electronics | -2.8% | AI supply chain selloff |
| S&P/ASX 200 | +0.1% to 8,747.60 | Less AI exposure |
Oil is the other half of the story
Brent crude jumped about 3 percent to $107.72 as US-Iran tensions around the Strait of Hormuz stayed elevated and Iran-backed Houthi forces kept up attacks on Saudi Arabia. ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote Monday that while prospects for de-escalation and a Hormuz reopening have dimmed, the situation remains fluid and sizeable volumes of oil are still moving through the strait.
Energy costs feed directly into the inflation picture that central banks face this week. The Federal Reserve meets September 15-16 with market pricing near 87 percent odds of a rate hike, an unusual setup at a time when most easing cycles have ended. Inflation remains above the Fed’s 2 percent target, pushed up by the war-driven energy shock and by US fiscal dynamics that have pressured Treasury yields higher.
The Bank of Japan also decides this week, and the Bank of England follows on Thursday. The dollar rose to 154.06 yen from 153.58, and the euro slipped to $1.1570 from $1.1598. Gold slipped 0.4 percent to about $4,333 as higher yields and a firmer dollar cut into its appeal.
Why SoftBank is the pressure point
SoftBank is the most concentrated public-market bet on the AI buildout. The company sold its entire Nvidia stake to help fund a $40 billion investment in OpenAI, and its shares have fallen nearly 32 percent in the two weeks since that disclosure. Monday’s drop compounds an already painful unwind for investors who bought the AI holding-company story at its peak.
The irony is hard to miss. The two companies SoftBank is most exposed to through OpenAI are the ones asking regulators to put the brakes on. If safety-driven slowdowns translate into delayed product cycles, reduced enterprise adoption or heavier compliance costs, the revenue assumptions behind the largest AI valuations take the hit first, and holding companies like SoftBank carry that hit with leverage on top.
President Donald Trump, for his part, dismissed the safety warnings as negative forces, which sets up a policy fight with no clear resolution timeline. Markets are left pricing a range of outcomes from light-touch oversight to mandatory development pauses, and the uncertainty alone is enough to move a stock with SoftBank’s concentration.
What Wall Street did and what comes next
Friday’s Wall Street session had gone the other way: the S&P 500 gained 0.9 percent to end a four-day losing streak, the Dow rose 1 percent and the Nasdaq climbed 1 percent. Whether US buyers step back in this week depends heavily on the Fed’s decision Wednesday and the tone of its projections. UK CPI and US retail sales also land Wednesday, giving traders a full plate of data before the Fed statement.
US futures edged lower in early Monday trading, which suggests the Asian selloff has at least some traction into the New York open. Watch how Nvidia and the other AI infrastructure names open: if they follow SoftBank and the Korean chipmakers lower, the AI trade’s worst fortnight of the year gets worse. If they stabilize, Monday’s Asia session will look like an overreaction to two CEOs talking.
For crypto markets, the same macro forces are at work. Bitcoin held near $77,300, little changed on the day, and ether traded near $2,480. Traders are waiting on the Fed rather than reacting to equity moves, with liquidations over the past 24 hours totaling around $270 million, mostly from long positions.
The week ahead is dense: Fed decision Wednesday, BoE Thursday, BoJ Friday, plus inflation data in the UK and retail sales in the US. AI safety headlines will keep coming regardless. The combination of an energy shock, a possible rate hike and the industry’s own leaders asking for a pause is a hard setup for risk assets, and SoftBank sits at the intersection of all three.