Gotrade News - A global chip selloff tore through Asian semiconductor stocks, with Samsung Electronics falling as much as 13.4% and SK Hynix sliding as much as 14% as fears over runaway AI spending, intensifying China competition, and Nvidia's reported financing of OpenAI reignited a broad semiconductor rout. According to Investing.com, the two chipmakers make up nearly half of South Korea's KOSPI index, which was down about 9.4% as of 0341 GMT. The rout hands US-listed chip investors a fresh risk read, with memory suppliers and foundries squarely in the crosshairs.
Key Takeaways
Samsung fell up to 13.4% and SK Hynix up to 14% as the KOSPI shed roughly 9.4%.
SK Hynix's US-listed shares closed below their $149 IPO price for the first time since debuting this month.
Nvidia dropped nearly 5% after a report it could back OpenAI with about $250 billion.
China lithography progress and cheap open-source AI models revived demand and oversupply fears.
SK Hynix carried some of the sharpest damage. As reported by Yahoo Finance, the company's US-listed shares closed 7.5% lower overnight at $143.02, dropping below their $149 IPO price for the first time since debuting this month. That matters well beyond Seoul: SK Hynix is a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to Nvidia (NVDA), the chip that anchors the AI-accelerator supply chain and is the clearest US-listed read-through when the memory tier wobbles.
The $250B Nvidia-OpenAI Report
The single loudest catalyst was Nvidia itself. Per Investing.com, Nvidia shares fell nearly 5% after the Wall Street Journal reported the company could provide roughly $250 billion in financial backing for OpenAI's data-center project. The figure is a report of talks, not a confirmed deal, but its scale rattled investors already uneasy about circular financing, where a chipmaker funds the customer that buys its chips. The worry is that such arrangements flatter demand today at the cost of tomorrow's sustainability. For the memory names that feed Nvidia's accelerators, any wobble in that demand story lands directly on order books.
"We seem to be at the despair part of the selloff, where tech investors are rushing for the exit because the Nasdaq says so," said Matt Simpson, market analyst at StoneX.
The scoreboard across Asia's chip complex was uniformly red, underscoring that this was a sector-wide de-rating rather than a single-name stumble.
Stock
Intraday move
SK Hynix
as much as -14%
Samsung Electronics
as much as -13.4%
Kioxia Holdings
nearly -18%
MediaTek (Taiwan)
more than -9%
Nvidia
nearly -5%
China Competition Reignites Oversupply Fears
The second driver came from China. According to Yahoo Finance, reports that Chinese firms are developing domestic deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography equipment reignited fears that China can close its chip-technology gap, a threat that has long shadowed the foundry and equipment chains that Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) sits atop. A strong market debut Monday for Chinese memory maker CXMT intensified oversupply worries in exactly the DRAM and HBM segments where Samsung, SK Hynix, and US-listed peer Micron Technology (MU) compete, making the memory tier the most exposed corner of the US-listed chip chain to any Chinese capacity surge. HBM has been the tightest, highest-margin corner of the market through the AI build-out, so new low-cost supply threatens the very pricing power that has carried memory earnings.
Demand-side doubts compounded the supply-side ones. The growing popularity of low-cost Chinese open-source AI models, including Kimi K3, raised questions about whether future AI-chip demand will scale as steeply as the market has priced. If cheaper models can do more with less silicon, the capital-spending arc that has powered the entire complex looks less certain.
Local desks framed the selloff as a story about narrative, not just numbers. Han Ji-young of Kiwoom Securities and Ryu Young-ho of NH Investment & Securities attributed the declines to a weakened AI-investment narrative and mounting competition fears, per Investing.com. For US-listed investors, the read-through runs down the same chain the Asian selloff exposed: the accelerator names, the memory suppliers, and the foundries that fabricate the chips. The catalysts sit offshore, but the exposure travels through the shared AI supply chain that binds the sector together.
Gotrade is the trading name of Gotrade Securities Inc., which is registered with and supervised by the Labuan Financial Services Authority (LFSA). This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research (DYOR) before investing.
