In an exclusive interview with Fortune’s Jeremy Kahn and Bea Nolan, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shrugged off existential-risk warnings from many leaders in the AI space, including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, saying the technology was “completely in our control.”
“I don’t know why anybody would want to support the advancement of a technology that’s going to result, you know, in the end of human civilization as we know it. And so, if they believe that, they really ought to stop working on it,” he said.
MORE FROM FORTUNE
How to Build 1,000 Next-Gen Leaders | Fortune Daily
An early Anthropic backer predicts a post-IPO valuation of up to $2.4 trillion, topping SpaceX – Shawn Tully
Chevron CEO warns oil buffers that cushioned the Iran war shock have been ‘drained’—and diesel relief may not come until 2027 – Muskaan Arshad
Wall Street’s earnings split: Goldman’s $18.7 billion blowout quarter—and why JPMorgan and BofA fell short – Morgan Chittum
Aneel Bhusri on coming back to refound Workday: ‘When AI showed up, all bets are off’– Alyson Shontell
As Social Security races toward insolvency, retirees are getting their biggest COLA boost in 4 years – Nick Lichtenberg
It’s not just billionaires fleeing Britain—fed up with grey skies, crumbling healthcare and the tax bill, a record 69,300 workers have left the U.K. – Orianna Rosa Royle
THE MARKETS
Global wave of selling as traders flee tech stocks
Traders decided they hate tech stocks in the last 24 hours, driving a global wave of selling. The tech-heavy South Korean KOSPI index fell 7.57% and at one point triggered a halt in trading. Nasdaq futures were down 1.03% this morning, signaling that the bloodletting may continue after the markets open in New York. CoreWeave lost 15.46% yesterday and sank a further 5.89% overnight; Oracle was down 8.83% and lost another 1.57% in post-market trading. Chipmakers suffered declines across the board.
Counterintuitively, much of the selling came despite some good news for the sector: Chipmaker TSMC reported Q3 earnings today that beat expectations and guided that its capex would increase over the next two years. In addition, Apple stock closed at a new record high, making it only the second company (after Nvidia) to reach a $5 trillion market cap. And Anthropic reported that it was profitable (on an adjusted basis) although its revenue growth ($17 billion in Q3) appears to be slower than previously estimated
The drama extended to the bond market, where investors couldn’t decide whether the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury was a safe haven or offering a risk premium. The yield on the bond peaked at 5.32% before sinking back to 5.08% this morning—a huge swing for the normally sedate asset.
- S&P 500 futures were down 0.24% this morning. The index was down 1.11% yesterday.
- In Europe, the Stoxx 600 was down 0.10% in early trading, and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.48% before lunch.
- Asia: South Korea’s KOSPI was down 7.57%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 4.90%. India’s Nifty 50 was up 1.68%. China’s CSI 300 was down 1.23%.
- Brent crude was $106 per barrel.
- Bitcoin fell to $81,265.
CHART OF THE DAY
Ignore all their complaining, Europeans are secretly very happy
Three-quarters (76%) of Europeans are optimistic about their future, according to this chart from ING’s Marieke Blom. The Danes and Slovenians are happiest of all, and although the French are the least optimistic, 62% of them are still happy about their future.
That’s counterintuitive, Blom believes, because news coverage of Europe tends to focus on its various dysfunctions. “An analysis of 35 years of Wall Street Journal articles shows that bad news generates far more follow-up stories than good news. In other words, bad news sticks,” she said in a recent blog. “Over those 35 years, a lot more attention has been devoted to bad news than to good.”
And on that topic…
NUMBER OF THE DAY
59%
The percentage of British people who now want to rejoin the E.U., according to polls tracked by James Moberly and Sven Jari Stehn at Goldman Sachs. They estimate that Brexit cost the U.K. 6% of its GDP so far.
THE FRONT PAGES TODAY
The man who would lead McKinsey – FT
U.S. Treasury yields plunge after hot CPI print as investors await more economic data – CNBC
Ukraine’s Starlink restrictions raise suspicions of Musk, Trump retaliation – Axios
Starlink Suspicions and a Frantic Warning: Inside Trump’s Turn on Zelensky – WSJ
Draghi Sees High Bar for ECB to Help France With Crisis Tool – Bloomberg
Trump’s New Press Secretary: Not-Quite Attorney at Law – NYT
OpenAI claims ex-employee brought confidential docs about ‘unreleased device’ to Apple – NY Post
ONE MORE THING
Americans eat 10 pounds of avocados per year, on average. Maybe it’s not enough.
It’s hard to imagine, but before 1993, Americans didn’t eat a lot of avocados. It only became legal to import a Mexican avocado to some states that year. Later, “in 1997, the USDA allowed Mexican Hass avocados into 19 northeastern states, for part of the year. Year-round access to all 50 states began February 1, 2007,” according to Ron Campbell, a lobbyist for the Mexican Avocado Industrial Complex.
American per-capita avocado consumption has increased sevenfold since the 1990s, he says, from 424 million pounds in 1998/99 to 3.25 billion pounds in 2024/25. Per capita, that’s 9.5 pounds of avocados per person each year, up from just 1.52 pounds in 1998/99.
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