Solaria, ACS, Acciona, and Merlin Properties have suffered strong declines on the stock market this Monday, of up to 8%, amid fears that a possible slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) will fully affect the activity of their data centers.
In detail, Solaria's shares have fallen by 8.36%, to 16.87 euros per share. ACS's shares have dropped by 6.51%, remaining at 91.85 euros. For its part, Acciona has lost 5.67%, down to 196.4 euros, while Merlin Properties has fallen by 5.64%, down to 12.38 euros.
The analyst from XTB, Javier Cabrera, has described the punishment received by these companies as "excessive," although he acknowledges that a real halt in technological investment would negatively impact their business linked to data centers.
"A slowdown in these infrastructures affects Solaria's strategy of installing solar plants linked to them and threatens the main growth engine of ACS, where data centers account for 22% of its global portfolio and 44% of its U.S. subsidiary Turner," explains the expert.
These four companies have been at the forefront of losses in a week-starting day dominated by red numbers in international markets. The Ibex 35 has closed with a decline of 1.38%. In parallel, Asian stock markets have concluded the session with significant drops, and Wall Street remains in 'red' at the close of European markets.
The declines come after Anthropic and OpenAI have requested to slow down the development of their AI models for safety reasons. In the case of OpenAI, moreover, the company has decided to postpone its IPO beyond 2026 for the same reason.
"While the measure is neither definitive nor quantifiable, any slowdown in investments will have a negative impact on the entire AI construction ecosystem, mainly semiconductors. Behind this alarmism, there may also be the interest of companies in having governments establish regulations with high compliance costs, which serve as a barrier to entry and eliminate the entry of smaller competition," say the analysts from Bankinter.