# AI Disruption, GLP-1 Price Wars, and EV Safety

**Podcast:** WSJ What’s News
**Published:** 2026-02-04

## Transcript

Safe viso Steuer.
Hold it down Geld zurück.
Software stocks keep on sliding as AI's rapidly evolving capabilities rattle investors.
Plus shares of Novo Nordisk plummet as price competition reshapes the market for weight loss drugs, and China flexes its regulatory muscle, banning retractable door handles on electric vehicles.com, PayPal, Expedia, and Equifax as traders called into question the competitive modes those businesses had built up.
And with more on this software sell-off, I'm joined by reporter Hannah Miao.
Hannah, what triggered this?
I kind of thought AI was a potential benefit for some of these companies, enabling them to kind of power up their professional offerings.
And yet the thinking seems to be they could just get bypassed completely.
Is that right?
Yeah, we've seen Anthropic and OpenAI release new models and updates recently that have shown a pretty big advancement in just how much these AI tools can do.
Anthropic's Claude Code has really taken off.
People have been vibe coding, which means people who are not technical software engineers being able to code their own tools using Claude.
And that has enabled people to play around with tools that help with a wide variety of tasks from analyzing health data to compiling expense reports.
So it's really kind of called into question the business models of these software companies.
And more recently, Anthropic announced it was adding legal tools to its cowork assistant, and that it could help automate a number of legal drafting and research tasks.
So that in particular has hit a number of companies that provide legal tools or research databases, and that kind of lit the spark for the broader sell-off in the software market yesterday.
And Hannah, the damage isn't limited there.
I mean, not that that's anything to write off, but it goes further.
This is spreading to investors in software.
That's right.
We've seen alternative investment firms in recent years really invest heavily in software equity and debt.
So those firms, such as KKR, Blue Owl Capital, or Blackstone, they all saw their shares punished yesterday in the sell-off as well.
So software has become a major slice of their investment portfolio, and investors in those companies are wondering if that will impact their overall business.
Yeah, it's hard to say exactly how this will play out, but we're hearing from software companies that, you know, it's not just the ability to write code that's the big part of their business.
They also do a lot of data management.
They have this trust with their clients.
And if people are vibe coding things that are handling sensitive customer information that might not be totally secure.
So we're seeing software companies trying to defend really their value add in this in this environment, and we'll see how it plays out.
That was the journal's Hannah Me Out.
Hannah, thank you as always for the update.
Thanks for having me.
Well, if you thought that the hyperscalers behind leading AI products are immune from that trend we just discussed.
Think again.
Microsoft dipped almost 3% yesterday on concerns that AI tools could make enterprise subscriptions less necessary.
The company's co-pilot assistant is a key part of its growth plans, but new data from Recon Analytics shows that subscribers who use Microsoft's Copilot as their primary option almost have in the last six months, while Google's Gemini gained in popularity.
According to City Research, some companies are using just 10% of the co-pilot subscription seats they've paid for.
Well, it's also a bad week for crypto, with Bitcoin now down nearly 40% since hitting a record in October.
The ongoing slump is also starting to hurt trading platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood, as well as companies previously rewarded for hoarding cryptocurrencies like Michael Saylor's strategy.
And as markets reporter Alex Osopovich explains, that could hurt crypto prices even more.
If you want to bet on Bitcoin going up, you can just buy Bitcoin.
But you can also bet on Michael Saylor and Strategy because you know that not only is your money when you invest in strategy going to be used to purchase Bitcoin, but it'll be used to purchase more Bitcoin.
And if his stock goes up, he'll issue more stock, sell it, and use it to buy Bitcoin.
So it's kind of a leveraged bet on Bitcoin.
The risk is that the effect will turn into reverse, and some of these companies could come under financial stress, and then they won't have any recourse except to sell their holdings of cryptocurrency.
And if they start selling, that'll put downward pressure on the price of whatever cryptocurrency they're holding, which would cause them to sell even more.
For strategy, a Bitcoin price below $76,000 is largely loss making because that's the average price that it paid for the crypto over the years.
Bitcoin is today trading right around that price.
Shares of Danish drug maker Novo Nordisk are plunging this morning after the maker of weight loss drugs Ozempik and Wigovi shaved its sales forecast and warned of unprecedented pricing pressure.
Journal Hurt on the Street columnist David Weyner told me that Novo is facing intense competition from Eli Lilly, reshaping a GLP one drug market that looked vastly different just a few years ago.
Both Lily and Novo Nordics agreed to reduce the prices of their drugs in some markets in exchange for some coverage with the Trump administration and obviously removal of the tariff threats that were a big cloud over the entire industry last year.
There is obviously surging demand for these drugs, but the concern is that the price cuts are sort of working against or counteracting that growth in volume.
So take Novo Nordics, for example.
The company's anticipating a 5 to 13% sales decline this year.
A lot of that is because prices are coming down.
In some markets, the drugs even going generic, like Canada, for example.
And it's not yet seeing that volume growth that makes up for that price decline.
Over time, there is some hope that the company could see growth, especially as it rolls out the Wagovy pill, which is essentially that first tablet form of GLP one.
So a lot of excitement in the company for that.
But volume growth needs to be very high to make up for that decline in prices that the company's seeing.
David, these GLP 1 pills may be, as you say, an exciting new frontier, but the list prices we're seeing for them kind of underscores the $1,000 or so a month that these companies have been talking for shots.
Yeah, absolutely.
We're certainly seeing price competition in a way that you don't normally see for big pharma.
Blockbusters.
In a way, it underscores the different type of market that we're in.
This isn't like the sort of immunotherapy cancer thing that comes out as $100,000 plus dollars a year, and the pharma company just sort of milks that off until the patent expires.
Coming up, we'll look at President Trump's diplomatic pivot with Columbia and why China is banning retractable car door handles.
Those stories and more after the break.
Berlin, wisst du das to mit einem EcoStrom richtig was bewegen?
Then the Berliner Stadtwerke invest here for Orthodoxorg.
Berliner Stadtwerke.
Good for dich, good for Berlin.
President Trump is doubling down on his view that Republicans should nationalize voting in the US.
Flanked by Congressional Republicans in the Oval Office, Trump hit out at battleground states as places of alleged corruption without citing specific evidence, and questioned whether they should continue to run their own elections as the Constitution spells out.
And finally, could retractable car door handles soon go the way of the dodo?
The staple of many EVs meant to increase aerodynamic efficiency are facing increased safety concerns, and authorities in China this week banned their use starting next year, saying that new cars would need to have both internal and external handles that can be mechanically opened.
And there were people that tried to take this person out, but the door couldn't be opened.
So that has spiked public concerns and probably also helped authorities consider this kind of rules.
Nearly half of all the cars sold in China are EVs or plug-in hybrids these days.
It'll be interesting to see if we continue to see auto regulations set in China have an impact on car design worldwide and how people think about safety of electric vehicles and connected cars.
We will be back tonight with a new show.
Until then, thanks for listening.
Hörst du das?
So klingen Füchse, wenn sie Schmetterlinge im Bauch haben.
Und die habe ich auch, der Sparfuchs von Sparsim.
Denn zum Valentinstag habe ich was zum Verlieben für dich: 60 GB im Vodafone-Netz für 9,99 Euro monatlich.
Und dank 50 Euro Wechselbonus wirst du fünf Monate lang mit gratis Surfen verwöhnt.
Mach Schluss mit deinem alten Tarif.
Sicher dir bis 17.
Februar deinen Deal auf sparsim.de.