Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on why $250 billion-plus wipe out in global stock markets triggered by Anthropic AI is purely ‘ILLOGICAL’ – The Times of India
Jensen Huang, CEO, Nvidia
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has dismissed the market panic that recently erased over $250 billion from global software stocks. Defending the software industry against fears that AI will make it obsolete, the chief executive of the world’s most valuable company has said that this concern is the “most illogical thing.” Speaking at a recent artificial intelligence (AI) conference in San Francisco hosted by Cisco Systems, Huang said concerns that AI will replace software companies are misguided, according to The Business Times.“There’s this notion that the tool in the software industry is in decline, and will be replaced by AI … It is the most illogical thing in the world, and time will prove itself. If you were a human or robot, artificial, general robotics, would you use tools or reinvent tools? The answer, obviously, is to use tools … That’s why the latest breakthroughs in AI are about tool use, because the tools are designed to be explicit,” Huang said at the event.Huang argued that AI will continue to rely on existing software rather than rebuild basic tools from scratch, pushing back against investor fears of AI-driven disruption in the data and professional services industry.
How Anthropic’s new tool caused panic around software stock sellout
The selloff began after AI startup Anthropic released 11 open-source plugins for its Claude Cowork tool late last month. This triggered what analysts are calling a “SaaSpocalypse“. The Claude Cowork is an AI assistant for non-technical professionals that manages files, drafts documents and automates workflows. One of the plugins the company rolled out was for legal work, automating contract reviews and compliance checks. Despite disclaimers requiring attorney review, the legal plugin triggered widespread investor panic.Legal tech stocks were hit particularly hard. Thomson Reuters dropped over 15%, RELX fell 14%, and LegalZoom declined nearly 20%. The panic spread globally over this week and wasn’t confined to legal tech stocks. Investor fear also hit software stocks in India, Japan and China, with Infosys ADRs slipping 5.5% and Wipro falling nearly 5%.Shares of domestic IT exporters slumped 6.3%, tracking losses in global software stocks. Indian IT major Infosys took the worst of it, with its stock declining 7.3%. China’s CSI Software Services Index also fell 3%, while in Hong Kong, shares of software company Kingdee International Software Group dropped more than 13%. In Japan, staffing agency Recruit Holdings and Nomura Research fell 9% and 8%, respectively.