Following Anthropic’s “We Must Pace the Frontier” essay and subsequent calls by Elon Musk and Sam Altman for a global slowdown of AI development, there’s been some skepticism about the motives behind the sudden solidarity among the three.

Is it really about saving humanity, or about what some believe is an “inevitable” AI slowdown because of simple math: current Capex models are fundamentally unsustainable.

By calling for collective, regulated pacing, the labs may be creating a narrative cover to de-escalate their costly arms race, allowing them to aggressively cut back on runaway expenditures without looking like they are losing to any of their competitors.

Another angle is that it may help them protect their current dominance, as strict safety standards and independent government evaluators could create an expensive regulatory barrier-to-entry for smaller, low-cost, open-source competitors.

Wall St. veteran Chuck Carlson of Horizon Investment Services and others noted that a forced pause by OpenAI and Anthropic would introduce severe valuation risks for upcoming IPOs, so he, like the rest of Wall St. is continuing to monitor the impact.

As of today, chip-related stocks are attempting a recovery while investors re-evaluate massive infrastructure spending. Wall St. will continue to scrutinize hyperscaler Capex while looking at rising bond yields and how they will affect future data center financing.