They must be the words every chief executive of a listed company currently dreads: "AI can do it cheaper, quicker and better."
Rather, it might be doubly worse, and those words, or something like them, are spoken during a precipitous share price collapse. Why have the shares gone down? "Because AI can…"
It’s a ritual that is being played out repeatedly at the moment. AI company Algorhythm Holdings announced that its new tool, SemiCab, could help customers scale freight volumes by 300 per cent to 400 per cent without increasing headcount, and sent its shares soaring by 30 per cent.
For every winner there is a loser, and, in this case, instantly, it was the stocks of US trucking firms. The sector promptly fell 6.6 per cent on the news, with shares in CH Robinson Worldwide at one stage plummeting 24 per cent. Landstar Systems was off 16 per cent, RXO minus 20.5 per cent – the worst day logistics operators had suffered since Donald Trump’s global tariffs bombshell in April last year.
One analyst described the febrile atmosphere in the equity markets as "category five paranoia". Not at Algorhythm, where the chief executive, Gary Atkinson, was ecstatic. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined a day like today," he said.
His tiny business, a "penny stock" in stock trading parlance, was giving the truckers a bloody nose. "It’s almost like David versus Goliath," he enthused. He’s not joking: until a very recent switch in direction, Algorhythm was known for making in-car karaoke sets.
Not only in the US. In Europe, logistics specialists DHL Group, DSV and Kuehne+Nagel International took a hammering. Not simply lorries. Quoted drug distributors McKesson Corp and Cardinal Health were also pounded. It was what Neil Wilson, an investor strategist at Saxo UK, described as "a broad AI fear trade".
Another investment strategist termed the panic the "dark side of AI". He was speaking after a sudden sell-off in wealth management stocks, including Charles Schwab and Raymond James. This was after the unveiling of yet another AI twist, this one putting them in the frame by allowing tax advisers to customise strategies for clients, looked set to challenge the industry’s fee structure.
Previously, it was the turn of Anthropic to rattle the markets via Claude Opus 4.6, described by the San Francisco AI developer as its "most capable" model for businesses and knowledge work. Business leaders across publishing, advertising and law, to name just three, were forced to swallow hard as Anthropic said its new version was able to find information, analyse it and generate an output that needed less human involvement.
News that Claude Opus 4.6 outperformed Open AI’s finest GPT-5.2 in an independent test duly sent hares running. Anthropic appears to be setting a higher bar in coding, with Opus 4.6 seemingly ahead on more difficult tasks demanding longer staying power. While everyone else is spooked, Anthropic is marching on, raising another $20 billion and pushing its value to $350 billion. Incredible for a start-up; not so good for established players now reduced to trying to keep up.
Anthropic targets businesses hungry to adopt AI – unlike OpenAI, Google and the like, which are chasing still-hesitant consumers. Anthropic’s Claude Code broke through the $1 billion revenue barrier in a mere six months, while its Cowork requires no coding abilities. As such, Cowork, with its easy-to-use add-ons, poses a direct threat to the software industry.
While Anthropic is riding the wave, it’s possible that another innovator, a new disruptor, will soon come along with something that is altogether faster, shinier. It’s because, for all the talk, AI remains at a nascent stage – we don’t know where the tech is heading and what it will achieve.
That, plus the fact that so much cash has been spent on chasing the dream, has made equity markets everywhere intensely nervous. There is a feeling that the anxiety, the lurching from one news story to another, cannot continue, not at this furious, white-knuckle pace.
"This year is the defining year on whether companies are AI winners or victims, and the key skill will be in avoiding the losers", is the verdict of Stephen Yiu, chief investment officer of Blue Whale Growth Fund. "Until the dust settles, it’s a dangerous path to be standing in the way of AI."
Plenty of chief executives will nod their heads in agreement with that. Equally, though, there are many who maintain that if AI is Mount Everest, we have yet to reach Base Camp – so there is no certainty whatsoever that this will be "the defining year" – there is so much ground still to cover and the scope for future shocks is enormous.
For now, the searchlight is constantly roaming, alighting on signs of possible weakness. Credit markets could be next, with tens of billions of dollars in loans at risk as companies are forced to square up to the AI invader. "We’re pricing in part of what we call a rapid, aggressive disruption scenario," Matthew Mish, UBS head of credit strategy, told CNBC. "A rapid, aggressive disruption scenario" can be summed up in one word: terrifying.
But there could be a greater impact building, of tsunami-like proportions. If it’s about climbing AI and we’re not yet at Base Camp, there is room for another mission to enter the race and reach the summit first, to look down on the world from a great height. Enter China, which is also at an early stage in its AI journey. Already, it has provoked market chaos with the DeepSeek development – China doing AI not just as well but more cheaply and efficiently, using less energy.
Not to be outdone, the determined second superpower is pursuing ‘AI+’, which is intended to integrate AI throughout its massive economy. Backed by Beijing’s funding and accelerating AI know-how, China is quietly and methodically catching up and may be set to overhaul Silicon Valley and the US. Indeed, one economist this week likened Xi Jinping to "a tech bro".
Economies and their businesses that do not have a problem with China could be poised to benefit and drive a huge hole in US corporate hegemony. No one, it seems, is immune from gathering AI anxiety, not even Donald Trump and his newfound tech friends.
