Terminal turmoil or another DeepSeek headfake? AI anxiety clouds ASX earnings season
Mike Cannon-Brookes urged investors to focus on fundamentals. Robert Thomson said he is building a lawyer-infested moat. But is anyone listening?
The bruising tech selloff across global markets is seeing CEOs face grillings on their companies’ resilience against and adoption of increasingly powerful AI tools that stand to reshape the white-collar economy.
Analysts were quick to seek assurances from News Corp’s Robert Thomson, REA Group’s Cameron McIntyre and Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes on Friday that recent AI advances — which helped wipe 11% off the ASX technology index since Tuesday’s close — will not negatively impact their businesses.
New tools released by Claude and OpenAI have upended markets amid fears they are making traditional software and other digital business models, such as publishing and online real estate, redundant.
By late afternoon, almost every stock on the ASX 200 had slumped with just a handful trading in the green. The benchmark index itself was down more than 2%.
