Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Here's your afternoon TNB Tech Minute for Monday, February 23rd. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. The weeks-long sell-off in software stocks deepened today amid general unease about the threat posed by AI. Software makers Applovin, CrowdStrike, Datadog, Workday, Expedia, and Intuit were all among the S&P 500's worst 10 performers around midday. dropping at least 7%.
Rapid advancements in AI's ability to write code have spooked investors this year. Several of the day's biggest decliners were discussed in a now-viral Sunday night post from Citrini Research. The post outlined a hypothetical scenario where AI profoundly impacts the economy in the near future.
Chapter 2: Why are investors concerned about the recent sell-off in software stocks?
also taking a hit, shares in big banks and other financial services firms. Investors are parsing through the possible impacts of AI on the payment processing fees that bring in billions of dollars to the industry every year. American Express's stock was down over 7% as of this afternoon, while JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley were all down 4% or more.
MasterCard was down roughly 6%, and Visa was down about 4%. And Anthropic accused three Chinese AI companies of creating over 24,000 fraudulent accounts to siphon data from its Claude model and improve their own products. In a blog post today, Anthropic said the three companies, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and Minimax, prompted Claude more than 16 million times.
Representatives from the three Chinese companies didn't respond to requests for comment. Anthropix said the alleged activity raises national security concerns regarding military and intelligence systems. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Tuesday's Tech News Briefing podcast.