15/09/2026

BIZ & FINANCE TUESDAY | SEPT 15, 2026

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AI-linked stocks slump after slowdown call by CEOs o Brent rises 3% in wake of Mideast attacks, US 10-year Treasury yields near 5% boom, particularly after Altman also said his company would not proceed with an IPO this year, citing safety concerns. Micron , which fell between 4.5% and 5.7%.

Boston Dynamics’ valuations vary widely. Samsung Securities said market estimates place its value at between 50 trillion won and 100 trillion won. Kim Joon-sung, an analyst at Meritz Securities, said a Boston Dynamics IPO was more likely to come in 2029 or 2030 because Hyundai first needed to gather large amounts of operational data and improve robots’ capabilities before selling them broadly to external customers. In August, IBK Securities said Boston Dynamics could be valued at 141 trillion won by 2030, when it expects the company to generate about 11 trillion won in revenue. Boston Dynamics recorded a 2025 loss of 528.4 billion won, according to a filing from Hyundai Glovis, which holds a stake of about 11% in the company. Total losses from 2021 through 2025 totalled nearly 1.7 trillion won, the filing said. – Reuters America hosts G20 ‘energy abundance’ talks amid Iran war shock HOUSTON: The United States yesterday kicked off a set of G20 meetings touting “energy abundance,“ even as President Donald Trump’s war against Iran continues to disrupt global fuel markets. The discussions are slated to continue until tomorrow in Houston, in the oil-rich US state of Texas. The meetings gather delegations from the world’s largest economies – including China, India, Japan and Germany – with major oil producers set to attend, such as Canada and Saudi Arabia. Russian diplomats indicated on Saturday that Moscow would also send some officials. The unexpected presence of Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov caused a stir at a previous G20 meeting two weeks ago. Ukraine’s European allies expressed disappointment in the US decision to invite Russia, which ran against efforts to exclude Moscow over the war on its neighbour. The Houston meetings come as oil and gas prices surge over the Middle East war, with Europe struggling to fill its gas storage facilities ahead of winter. One of Washington’s stated priorities as G20 host is to expand access to affordable, reliable and secure energy, but supply has been dramatically impacted since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February. Prices at the pump have skyrocketed in the United States, where the price of a gallon of diesel has hit a record high, and now runs an average US$6.20, according to the American Automobile Association. Regular gasoline is also 44 per cent more expensive than it was before the war. The unpopular war and its consequences have Trump’s Republican Party fearing a defeat in the November midterm elections. The US president has accused Iran of extending the conflict to hurt him politically, claiming recently that the war would end“immediately”after the election. Trump also accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of causing a diesel shortage with strikes on Russian refineries. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are expected to attend the meetings in Houston. – AFP

Tech-heavy markets in Asia, such as Tokyo and Seoul, fell between 1% and 3%. Government bond yields, which posted their worst weekly performance since mid-May last week, edged higher. Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasuries are on the verge of hitting 5%, the most since 2023, while German 10-year yields topped 3.53% to reach their highest since 2009. Markets also imply around a 76% chance the Bank of Japan will lift its cash rate by a quarter point, to 1.25%, when it meets on Friday and is expected to signal further tightening could take place as it struggles to support the yen, after market intervention helped to pull it from a 40-year low. – Reuters

“This is a highly unusual unified message from a group of tech CEOs, and it is weighing on the AI trade this morning,” XTB research director Kathleen Brooks said. “Is this warning about AI a sign that hyperscaling AI compute and infrastructure has reached its endpoint? “If so, this will have massive repercussions for financial markets, and it could also lead to a sharp selloff in chip stocks and other components of the AI trade at the start of the new trading week.” S&P 500 futures fell 0.7%, while Nasdaq futures fell 1.7%, reflecting the premarket slide in shares of AI staples such as Marvell, Intel and

LONDON: Global stocks fell yesterday, driven lower by a slide in AI shares, as investors were unnerved by another surge in the oil price ahead of likely interest-rate hikes in the United States and Japan this week. AI-linked shares took an added hit after the leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic called for a slowdown in development to manage risks and protect humanity. Brent climbed almost 3% as new strikes on Saudi Arabia and on ships in the Gulf strained nerves, after an attack on a Saudi oil pipeline, while a meeting in Oman between Iran and Gulf Arab states, scheduled for yesterday to discuss a deal on opening the Strait of Hormuz, was postponed. Friday’s US consumer inflation report came in hotter than expected and traders now attach a near-90% chance of the Federal Reserve raising rates tomorrow, in what would be its first hike since mid-2023. The European Central Bank raised rates last week and indicated more may follow if inflation picks up. “There’s been no real equity-market drama in the face of 5% yields and high oil prices. But, clearly, one thing we have to add to the mix is that if the disruption in Hormuz continues, we’re going to have to add a couple of hikes by central banks, which is what the market is pricing,” Lombard Odier chief economist Samy Chaar said. “The Fed is more impatient than it was, and central banks are more impatient than they were, the ECB included. They’re not just going to let time do its work. They want to get ahead of it,” he said. Brent futures were last up 2.5% at US$107.18 a barrel, having SEOUL: Boston Dynamics, Hyundai Motor Group’s humanoid robot unit, is unlikely to pursue an initial public offering next year, a senior executive at the parent company with direct knowledge of the matter said, as it has yet to deploy its flagship Atlas robots at scale and remains unprofitable. The executive’s comments suggest a stock market debut for the US-based robotics company may still be years away, despite investor enthusiasm for Hyundai’s robotics ambitions, which helped send automaker Hyundai Motor shares to record highs earlier this year. “It won’t be easy,“ the executive said when asked whether an IPO was possible next year. “We need to see conditions and situations,“ he added, without elaborating. He asked not to be named publicly because the matter is confidential. Hyundai Motor Group has not publicly disclosed a timetable or

gained almost 9% last week. Prices for diesel, gasoline and jet fuel are all far higher than they were before the war, meaning a direct hit for consumers. In Europe, the STOXX 600 was down 0.3% as gains in oil and gas stocks were offset by losses in tech, which were swept lower after the concerns expressed in a letter by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, echoed by Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. For markets, the immediate risk is that of a slowdown in the billions of dollars being spent on the AI

People walk past an electronic quotation board displaying the Nikkei Stock Average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday. – AFPPIC IPO for robot maker Boston Dynamics unlikely in 2027: Executive

Hyundai has said it is seeking to build a factory capable of producing 30,000 robots a year by 2028 and plans to begin deploying humanoid robots at its US plant in Georgia that year before spreading them across its manufacturing network. Some analysts have said those targets are ambitious. “I think it might take far more time for humanoid robots to replace human workers at the assembly line,“ said Kim Hyun-su, a senior fund manager at Seoul-based IBK Asset Management. “It’s not difficult to make robots dancing, but it’s challenging to make them carry heavy loads and get involved in manufacturing at plants.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company is developing the Optimus humanoid robot, has described humanoid robots as “the hardest product to scale manufacturing” that the electric car maker has made.

roughly 10% stake at an undisclosed valuation. At the time, media reports said the transaction was likely worth about 500 billion won (RM1.5 billion). The South Korean group’s push into robotics has drawn attention from investors. Hyundai Motor shares more than doubled earlier this year after it unveiled the production version of its Atlas robot in January, though they have since given up much of those gains amid a lack of updates on its robotics strategy. Shares of Hyundai Motor, the world’s third-largest auto group along with affiliate Kia, are up 25% so far this year, lagging behind a 60% surge in the broader market . Analysts say Boston Dynamics is unlikely to go public in the next few years because humanoid robots are still not able to be deployed widely in factories.

valuation target for a potential Boston Dynamics listing. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Boston Dynamics was not available for comment outside business hours. Since the unveiling of the updated Atlas robot in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, investors and analysts have closely watched whether the company would pursue a US IPO for Boston Dynamics to help finance its growth. Analysts have published estimates for the company’s sales growth and potential valuations due to increasing interest among investors in the robot maker. Hyundai bought a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics in 2021, and in July, it announced plans to make the company a wholly owned subsidiary by acquiring SoftBank’s