Luke Vargas

Software stocks keep on sliding as AI's rapidly evolving capabilities rattle investors.

Plus, shares of Novo Nordisk plummet as price competition reshapes the market for weight loss drugs.

And China flexes its regulatory muscle, banning retractable door handles on electric vehicles.

It's Wednesday, February 4th.

I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

Software stocks in Asia and Europe are sliding today following a rough day on Wall Street that saw the rise of new AI tools shave more than $300 billion off of companies that sell or invest in software.

Yesterday's big losers included Adobe, Salesforce, LegalZoom.com, PayPal, Expedia, and Equifax as traders called into question the competitive moats those businesses had built up.

And with more on this software sell-off, I'm joined by reporter Hannah Miao.

Hannah, what triggered this?

I kind of thought AI was a potential benefit for some of these companies, enabling them to kind of power up their professional offerings.

And yet the thinking seems to be they could just get bypassed completely.

Is that right?

And Hannah, the damage isn't limited there.

Not that that's anything to write off, but it goes further.

This is spreading to investors in software.

A lot of disruption in the air, Hannah.

A bunch of analysts using this moment to be quite vocal about how they feel about AI, a threat to many of the big names in software.

But I'm curious if that's the only view.

Are we hearing cases for why some of these companies will be able to defend their moats?

That was the journal's Hannah Miao.