Bitcoin bucks tech selloff as AI safety concerns weigh on stocks

U.S. technology and artificial intelligence stocks fell in pre-market trading Monday after leading CEOs renewed concerns about the pace of AI development over the weekend.

Cryptocurrencies, in contrast, rose. Bitcoin BTC$77,568.78 gained about 1% over the past 24 hours to $77,800, while ether ETH$2,513.85 added 1% to $2,500.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the industry to slow development to allow safety measures to catch up. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, whose xAI developed Grok, voiced agreement. Anthropic also reportedly selected Nasdaq for its anticipated IPO, while Altman confirmed his company will not go public in 2026.

South Korea’s Kospi fell 3% and SK Hynix (000660), whose memory chips are used by AI companies, dropped 6%. U.S. technology stocks followed lower in pre-market trading, with the Invesco QQQ ETF, which tracks the Nasdaq 100 index, falling 1.5%.

Neocloud providers Nebius NBIS$209.38·Market Closed and CoreWeave (CRWV) fell 6% and 5%, respectively, while chipmakers Sandisk (SNDK) and Intel (INTC) each lost 5%.

Rising oil prices are adding to the pressure. Brent crude climbed more than 3% to $107 a barrel, while WTI traded above $103. Longer-dated Treasury yields edged lower, with the U.S. 10-year yield just below 5% and the 30-year at 5.355%.

Precious metals also retreated. Gold fell almost 1% to around $4,300 an ounce and silver declined 1.5%.