Artificial intelligence is having a moment. And in markets, that usually means someone else is having a rough week.
The latest victims of the technology are real estate, trucking and logistics stocks, joining financial and software-as-a-service stocks in plunging on AI fears.
Office towers could soon be empty, according to Elon Musk, who made the comments on a podcast last week, as AI replaces workers. It's a point echoed in an essay by OtherSide AI co-founder and CEO Matt Shumer, who argued that AI could eradicate entry-level, white-collar jobs. If fewer people clock in, fewer leases get signed.
In freight, the pressure was more concrete. AI company Algorhythm Holdings released a tool it claims allows operators to scale freight volumes by 300% to 400% without hiring more employees. That prospect was enough to send trucking and logistics stocks plummeting.
"We believe investors are rotating out of high-fee, labor-intensive business models viewed as potentially vulnerable to AI-driven disruption," Jade Rahmani, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a note Wednesday.
Not every balance sheet is under siege. Japan's SoftBank said it added $4.2 billion in value to its OpenAI investment, which helped boost its Vision Fund by $2.4 billion in the December quarter.
AI was also the centerpiece of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong's 2026 budget announcement. The city-state will launch a "national AI council," support firms that want to harness AI and provide citizens who undergo select courses with six months of free access to advanced AI tools.
Separately, CK Hutchinson Holdings on Thursday said that it would take "legal recourse" against APM Terminals, an affiliate of Danish shipping giant Maersk, if it takes over its operations at the Balboa or Cristobal ports in Panama. A CK Hutchinson subsidiary currently runs those ports, but Panama's Supreme Court recently ruled to void the firm's license, a move widely viewed as a victory for the Trump administration.
— CNBC's Michelle Fox, Sarah Min, Lim Hui Jie and Anniek Bao contributed to this report.
What you need to know today
Anthropic closed a $30 billion funding round at a $380 billion post-money valuation. That's more than double what the AI company was worth in September and is the second-largest private tech fundraising round on record, after OpenAI.
Apple had its worst day since April, with its stock falling 5% on Thursday and down almost 4% for 2026. Reports of delays with Siri and regulatory scrutiny over the company's news app weighed on shares.
The U.S. consumer price index is due Friday and is expected to show a 2.5% gain from a year ago, according to the Dow Jones consensus forecast for the January release.
Major U.S. benchmarks retreated Thursday, with the S&P 500 falling 1.57%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 1.34% and the Nasdaq Composite slumping 2.03%. The pan-European Stoxx 600 fell 0.49% amid earnings from Siemens, Hermès and Mercedes-Benz Group.
[PRO] How will the U.S. CPI move markets? The S&P 500 could lose as much as 2.5% or jump 1.7% depending on what the core month-on-month numbers look like, according to JPMorgan Chase.
And finally...
Ask an investor to name safe-haven currencies, and most will say the U.S. dollar, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen. Investors historically expected them to hold their value during geopolitical or economic turbulence.
But more recently, these currencies have experienced volatility themselves. The dollar and yen saw sharp declines over 2025 and into 2026. The franc has strengthened, but this is challenging for a country with unusually low inflation and a reliance on exports.
— Lim Hui Jie, Chloe Taylor
