Tech stocks down on AI bubble fears, from St to Infineon and Asml
Contributing to the alarm over the sector is a report by MIT, according to which '95 per cent of companies are not getting any return' from investments in generative Artificial Intelligence
2' min read
2' min read
(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - Doubts about excessive enthusiasm revolving around the benefits of artificial intelligence, accompanied by signs of possible investor rotation towards stocks more favoured by interest rate cuts, weighed on tech stocks. In Wall Street's Tuesday 19 August session, software group Palantir plummeted 9.4 per cent (worst on the S&P), chip giant Nvidia lost 3.5 per cent (worst on the Dow), Oracle 5.8 per cent and chip designer Arm 5 per cent. These performances triggered a chain reaction in Europe, but with smaller declines: StMicroelectronics lost 0.8%, Infineon gave up 1.78% in Frankfurt, Asm 1.74% in Amsterdam, while Asml limited its declines to -0.64%.
Contributing to the fall in US stocks is a report published on the eve of the event by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) entitled 'State of AI in Business 2025', according to which "95% of companies are not getting any return from investments in generative AI, the technology that has sent US stocks soaring to record levels in recent months. According to the report, only five per cent of integrated AI pilot projects are generating value, with returns in the millions, while the vast majority remain stuck in the starting blocks, with no effect on corporate accounts. According to Mit, popular tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot have exceeded 80 per cent adoption and nearly 40 per cent deployment, but they only affect individual productivity, not operating margin. Customised enterprise systems, on the other hand, are often rejected: 60% of companies evaluate them, but only 20% get to test them and barely 5% take them into production. The main reasons are the difficulty of integrating them into workflows, the lack of contextual learning, and the lack of adaptability..
Returning to the stock drop - as the Financial Times notes - this comes just days after Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, signalled that an AI bubble may be forming. "Are investors too enthusiastic? In my opinion, yes," Altman said last week, believing that "some investors will lose a lot of money". "There will be phases of irrational enthusiasm. But overall, the value to society will be enormous."
