Micron Falls to Three-Month Low as Democrat Calls for Pause on Advanced AI Development

Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona wrote on X: "Top of the Democratic agenda on day 1 needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out of control industry, and a ban on artificial superintelligence."

The post is not a party position, and no such measure has been scheduled. But it arrived as investors were already repricing chip and data centre stocks on the expectation that a Democratic Congress will tighten oversight of AI infrastructure. Memory makers such as Micron have been among the biggest winners from AI data centre spending, so the prospect of slower construction falls directly on them.

The selling spread across the AI supply chain, according to Stocktwits. SanDisk and SK Hynix extended their losses. Nvidia, Intel and AMD fell between 0.5 per cent and 2 per cent in overnight trading. AI cloud providers CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN dropped between 2 per cent and 3.6 per cent. The iShares Semiconductor ETF was down 4.5 per cent for the week and 1.2 per cent overnight.

Investors had already been moving out of AI-linked stocks over the past month because they doubted that the largest technology companies would keep up their pace of capital spending. Analysts expect that new rules, if they come, could slow data centre building and limit the growth of AI computing capacity.

Not everyone expects the election to change the spending outlook. Daniel Newman, chief executive of research firm Futurum Group, said demand outside the US should be enough to offset any slowdown in American building and that "forecasts remain intact."

Calls to slow the AI build-out have been circulating among progressive lawmakers for months. In March, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled a proposal for a federal moratorium on new AI data centres, which would last until national safeguards for workers' jobs, civil liberties and the environment were in place. At the time, Republicans controlled both chambers, and Democrats were divided on AI regulation. Democratic Senator John Fetterman opposed the moratorium, according to Al Jazeera.

The new Congress, with Democrats in charge of both the House and the Senate, is due to convene in January. That is when any attempt to turn proposals such as Ansari's into legislation would begin.