AI backlash is mounting. Executives are getting booed. Workers are threatening strikes, and protests are frustrating data center development — but that doesn't seem to worry investors who are raining money on companies in the business.

Why it matters: AI hate could slow adoption of the technology, posing an underappreciated risk for investors buying into the current frenzy.

The latest: Even SpaceX's prospectus — which is threaded with AI hype — warns that the backlash is a real threat:

• "If AI technologies are perceived to be significantly disruptive to society, it could lead to governmental or regulatory restrictions or prohibitions on their use, societal concerns or unrest, or, both, any of which could materially and adversely affect our ability to develop, deploy or commercialize AI technologies and execute our business strategy."

Community outcry against AI was a key topic in recent meetings that Morgan Stanley strategists had with investors recently in the U.S., they wrote in a note Monday. The two important areas of concern: job loss and electric bills.

• "These issues may increasingly become a part of the political landscape and could result in greater pushback to data center growth."
• The growing opposition to data centers, along with some projects getting canceled, is "sapping confidence" among investors, per a client note from Jefferies, Axios' Madison Mills recently reported.

Where it stands: The AI boom is a clear windfall for a select few who are hoovering up all that money — CEOs, key executives and a coterie of lucky employees inside the big AI startups.

• Meta dangled pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a few top researchers; 600 OpenAI employees recently cashed in stock worth $6.6 billion, per the Wall Street Journal.
• And for now, investors are obviously reaping gains, too.

Friction point: With so few people benefiting from this theoretically amazing technology — and with job losses underway and projected — there is bound to be anger.

• The American CEO of London-based Standard Chartered apologized today for his comment that the bank would replace "lower-value human capital" with artificial intelligence.
• Communities around the country are bristling at the physical manifestation of AI — the sprawling data centers believed to raise local electricity costs and contribute little to local economies.
• There's also rising concern over AI misuse, misinformation and data privacy, per the Morgan Stanley note.

Case in point: A fight in South Korea over profits between Samsung Electronics and its workers offers a glimpse into how the backlash could play out.

• Employees wanted a bigger share of the AI profit windfall the company has seen this year thanks to the chip boom — Samsung's market cap recently crossed $1 trillion. Workers threatened to strike.

Zoom in: The stakes? The South Korean economy. Samsung's revenue made up more than 12% of the country's GDP last year, CNN notes.

• Yesterday, after the two sides reached a deal — not only did Samsung's stock pop, but the entire South Korean stock market rose, too.

Yes, but: Samsung's employees are unionized. In the U.S., workers are often at the mercy of their bosses.

The big picture: History is littered with examples of backlash against a technological or economic threat that ultimately proved futile. We see you, Luddites!

The bottom line: There's AI resistance. Investors are noticing, but for now, the money machine chugs on.

Wholesale cocoa prices have plunged 70% from their late 2024 peak. But don't expect cheaper chocolate any time soon.

Why it matters: Chocolate sellers' reluctance to cut consumer prices, despite a collapse in the price of their key input, illustrates how corporate pricing decisions often work.

Between the lines: Companies really, really want to avoid lowering prices.

Case in point: U.S. chocolate candy giant Hershey told analysts late last month that despite the drop in cocoa, the company sees "no change in the pricing environment."

• Why? Companies typically don't cut prices unless competition or economic conditions force them to. And that's largely because of another big factor: consumer inertia.
• Along with market power, academics say inertia — driven by shopper reluctance to switch brands or merely by inattention to prices — is a powerful force for companies seeking to keep prices elevated.

How it works: Companies would prefer not to wake such shoppers from their cart-filling stupor. And some theorize that overt price changes can be important triggers for consumer behavior shifts.

• Companies saw a lot of that during the post-COVID inflation, when rising prices angered people and prompted them to make a change to their typical basket.
• But it can work the other way as well. Some research shows that far from being a discrete decision — a price cut can "train" customers to expect further discounts to come. That potentially puts prices — and profits — in decline for a longer period than one might expect.
• Companies sometimes prefer to pass along some of their windfall from falling input prices to consumers in oblique ways.

The intrigue: After getting criticism for recipe changes for some candies, Hershey recently announced it was changing some of those products to higher-cocoa-content "dark chocolate" formulations, though a spokesperson for the Hershey Company tells Axios that decision was "not driven by cocoa prices."

What they're saying: "We don't take pricing lightly," wrote Allison Kleinfelter, head of communications at the Hershey Company, in an email to Axios.

• "We absorbed unprecedented cocoa costs for two years before taking pricing in 2025 that didn't fully cover those costs. Cocoa markets remain volatile and elevated, and our plan is to recover those costs over the next few years while keeping our brands affordable and accessible."