KR — 전자신문

Doubts Over AI Investment Returns Spread; Wall Street Hedges Risk with Put Options and CDS

AINovember 2, 20262 min read

Wall Street investors are buying insurance-like bets to protect themselves if AI stocks and AI business profits fall. Doubts are growing about whether the huge sums of money poured into AI will pay off.

Wall Street Prepares for an AI Drop

Big investors are using special financial tools to guard against losses from AI investments. The Wall Street Journal reported that individual investors and tech company executives who put money into AI companies are buying put options and credit default swaps (CDS). These tools can pay off when prices fall. Demand is also growing to protect against a drop in the rental price of AI chips (GPUs).

Key Numbers and Facts

Intel's stock fell 28.6% in one day on the 30th of last month.
Alphabet fell more than 12% in one day, its biggest one-day drop ever.
Put option trading hit a record high last month and has stayed high since.
CDS prices for five big tech firms (Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle) rose over the past month. They are the highest since 2021.
CoreWeave's stock was trading around $55 last week. Many bets are on a drop to a $35 strike price with a 2028 expiry.

Some Simple Terms

A put option is a contract that makes money when a stock price goes down. A CDS works like insurance: the buyer is protected if a company cannot repay its debt. When CDS prices rise, the market is more worried that a company may fail to pay. GPU rental prices matter because data centers earn money by renting out these chips to other companies.

Why It Matters

Huge amounts of money are flowing into AI, so a big loss could hit many investors and companies at once. One expert said that CDS prices rising for every company points to worry about the whole AI industry, not just one firm. Markets are now treating AI risk as a serious issue.

What to Watch

Whether AI stock prices keep swinging up and down sharply.
Whether CDS prices for big tech firms keep rising.
How put option trading changes in the coming months.
Whether GPU rental prices fall and hurt data center operators.

Glossary

Put option: A contract that pays the buyer when a stock price falls.
GPU: A powerful computer chip used to run AI programs.
CoreWeave: A company that provides cloud computing infrastructure for AI.

Anthropic Renames Claude's "Max 20x" Plan to "Ultra," Removes 5-Hour Usage Limits at $200/Month

Anthropic announced on October 30 (local time) that it has renamed the personal Claude "Max" plans: Max 5x ($100/month) becomes "Max," and Max 20x ($200/month) becomes "Ultra," with prices unchanged. For verified Ultra accounts, the 5-hour usage limit has been removed, though newer accounts keep temporary limits until verification is complete, while weekly limits remain.

AITechCrunchNov 2

AI can make tech CEOs’ lives easier. What about everyone else?

Tech CEOs including Marissa Mayer, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg have faced criticism for comments praising AI's usefulness in personal life, such as parenting and relationships. TechCrunch's Amanda Silberling argues that the industry is pushing toward a future where basic human interaction is increasingly optimized out, and that AI executives may be too out of touch to build products for ordinary people.

AIVnExpressNov 1

Elon Musk: AI agents will hack systems to make money for themselves

After hackers stole an estimated $6.3 billion in crypto from Binance on October 29, Elon Musk commented on X that superintelligent AI agents will one day do the same to make money for themselves rather than for humans. Around $3 billion of the stolen funds was reportedly frozen by stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether, while Binance said it has restored 90% of the lost assets and will cover the remaining 10%. Blockchain analysts and the FBI have linked the attack to the North Korean group TraderTraitor.

AI전자신문Nov 1

MetaBuild's AI Integration Platform 'MESIM AX' Designated as a Public Procurement Excellence Product

MetaBuild announced that its AI integration platform 'MESIM AX' was designated as a 2026 3rd-round Excellent Public Procurement Product by the Public Procurement Service (PPS) of Korea. The designation allows private contracts under relevant laws and inclusion in priority purchasing for public institutions' technology-developed products, and MetaBuild says it has also set up a public procurement supply channel via the Nara Market shopping mall. The platform connects existing information systems, data and AI services, and is supplied to more than 4,000 institutions across sectors.