Chip stocks slide in US and Asia as AI jitters rattle investors
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Shares in major chip firms have fallen sharply in the US and Asia as a sell-off in artificial intelligence-related stocks deepened
Trading on South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index was paused temporarily on Tuesday morning after sliding by 8%. It fell further after the 20-minute halt was lifted to trade around 10% lower
The slump was led by technology firms, with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both falling by about 12%
It comes after AI chip giant Nvidia fell by 5% in New York on Monday, meaning it lost its position as the world’s most valuable listed company to Apple
The tech-heavy Kospi has been halted eight times so far this year under a stock market mechanism known as a circuit breaker, which is designed to calm panic selling
The index had more than doubled from the start of the year to mid-June but has since lost around a third of its value
In recent months, stock market trading has been particularly volatile in South Korea as it has attracted large numbers of retail investors
On Monday, US-listed shares in SK Hynix fell by 7.5% to well below the $149 (£112.11) offer price when it made a record-breaking debut on the Nasdaq on 9 July
Japan’s Nikkei 225, which is also dominated by tech companies, was almost 3.8% lower on Tuesday morning
Nvidia shares fell on Monday after the Wall Street Journal reported that it is in talks to provide around $250bn for OpenAI as part of a massive data-centre project
The BBC has contacted Nvidia and OpenAI for comment
The decline allowed Apple to overtake Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company after the iPhone maker rose by about 25% this year
As governments and companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars on developing AI capabilities, some analysts have questioned whether the technology can become profitable enough to recoup such huge investments
There are also concerns about growing competition from Chinese chip makers
Shares in the country’s biggest memory chip maker soared by nearly 470% as they made their debut in Shanghai on Monday
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) said said it plans to use most of the proceeds from the initial public offering (IPO) to boost production and carry out more research and development
CXMT manufactures dynamic random-access memory (Dram) chips that power AI data centres, mobile phones, PCs, tablets and other devices
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