U.S. stock futures drop on tech weakness

S&P 500 Futures dropped 0.27% to 7,783.0 points, Nasdaq 100 Futures declined 0.2% to 30,821.50 points, and Dow Jones Futures shed 0.3% to 51,994.0 points

U.S. stock futures fell on Sunday evening as markets braced for renewed weakness in technology shares after OpenAI said it was halting development of some advanced artificial intelligence models.

Heightened tensions in Iran also weighed after U.S. president rejected a ceasefire proposal, with oil prices up sharply in early Asian trade.

S&P 500 Futures dropped 0.27% to 7,783.0 points by 23:30 GMT. Nasdaq 100 Futures declined 0.2% to 30,821.50 points, and Dow Jones Futures shed 0.3% to 51,994.0 points.

Futures dropped after a positive Friday session on stock market, with U.S. stocks also clocking weekly gains as optimism over Meta Platforms’ new AI agent sparked a broader tech rally. But concerns over Iran, rising Treasury yields and hawkish central bank signals stifled overall gains.

Brent prices soared around 2% in early Asian trade on Monday. Soaring crude has been a major point of concern for stock market amid fears that high energy costs will drive up inflation and interest rates.

Technology stocks were set for new challenges this week after a report said OpenAI had paused the training of its latest AI models amid several instances of its AI agents going rogue.

The news came just days after OpenAI said it was investigating incidents involving OpenAI agents using government websites in unexpected manners.

The prospect of an AI development slowdown by one of the U.S.’ leading frontier labs raises renewed questions about high-flying technology valuations, especially in the chipmaking and cloud computing sectors.

A slower pace of development could impede demand for advanced chips and computing capacity.

Fears over such a scenario came into focus earlier in September after OpenAI rival Anthropic also called for a slowdown in development.