Shares of companies tied to AI data center buildout fell sharply on Monday after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed slowing the pace of frontier model development over the weekend. GE Vernova dropped nearly 9%, Vertiv fell close to 8%, Caterpillar sank more than 4%, and Oracle slipped almost 4%. RBC Capital Markets equity analyst Rishi Jaluria told CNBC that a slowdown in model development and training would likely weigh on Oracle's cloud infrastructure business. Separately, two unnamed sources said hyperscalers are rushing to secure AI debt over the next six weeks, with Amazon raising roughly 4.25 billion pounds last week and Alphabet raising about $10 billion in a euro bond sale in May, though new deals this fall are expected to price at significantly higher rates.
The market reaction shows how directly the data center supply chain, spanning power equipment, cloud infrastructure, and server manufacturers, is exposed to shifts in AI model development pace. The simultaneous signal that new debt financing will carry higher rates than prior issuances points to rising capital costs for the infrastructure projects that underpin AI expansion.
CNBC coverage of Wall Street scrutinizing whether an AI demand slowdown could impact the multi-hundred-billion-dollar data center buildout cycle is a high-impact market-sentiment story involving named financial institutions and AI infrastructure investment trends.