TLDR
- Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said the AI slowdown push is about “profitability at $1 trillion mcap”
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for slower AI development, citing safety risks
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk both backed Amodei’s proposal
- Former White House AI adviser David Sacks said AI labs can slow down voluntarily without dragging the whole industry into regulation
- Markets showed no panic reaction to the slowdown talk at Monday’s open
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko fired back at AI industry leaders this week after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Elon Musk all came out in support of slowing down AI development.
Yakovenko kept his response short. He posted four words on X: “Profitability at $1 trillion mcap.” He did not name any specific company or provide any financial data to back up the claim.
Profitability at $1t mcap https://t.co/wEpIG4cJ9N
— toly 🇺🇸 (@toly) September 13, 2026
His point seemed clear. He suggested that the push to slow AI is less about safety and more about locking in the market positions of the biggest players once they reach trillion-dollar valuations.
Yakovenko also followed up by saying he had told his Codex to use fewer tokens, appearing to mock the idea of an artificial pause in AI progress.
What Amodei Actually Proposed
Amodei published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier.” In it, he called for slowing the rate of AI capability improvements, not stopping research altogether.
His plan has three stages. First, Anthropic would give third-party evaluators ongoing access similar to internal safety staff. He named METR, the Model Evaluation and Threat Research organization, as one example.
Second, frontier AI companies in democratic countries would coordinate on shared safety requirements. Amodei acknowledged this could raise antitrust concerns and might need narrow government approval.
Third, he proposed international coordination, including possible agreements with China, ranging from limits on AI-assisted weapons to controls on automated model improvement.
Altman endorsed the proposal on September 12, writing “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier.” He specifically agreed to bring in independent evaluators with employee-level access and said OpenAI would share more details soon.
Musk’s response was brief. He reposted Amodei’s essay and wrote “Dario is right,” according to Reuters. He did not specify which parts of the plan he supported.
Sacks Pushes Back
David Sacks, former White House AI and crypto adviser, argued that Anthropic and OpenAI can slow down on their own without pulling the rest of the industry into a regulatory framework.
He called the two companies a “duopoly on frontier intelligence” and said top-down regulation could end up crushing smaller startups and open-source projects that have been closing the gap with the big labs.
Sacks also said a global AI agreement is unlikely to work because China would not comply. He warned that restrictions on American labs could amount to a self-imposed technological setback.
Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI has responded directly to Yakovenko’s or Sacks’ criticisms.
Markets did not react with alarm. Analysts noted that slowing frontier model development does not necessarily mean less spending on AI infrastructure overall.
As of September 13, Anthropic has committed to outside evaluations but has not published a start date or named an evaluator for the process.
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