A wave of selling hit AI chip stocks as the third quarter opened, spilling from Wall Street into Asian markets. According to Yahoo Finance, the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all slipped as semiconductor stocks sank.
The damage was sharpest in South Korea. CNBC reported that shares of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, two of the world's largest memory-chip makers, plummeted more than 7% in early Thursday trading. Moneycontrol, citing Bloomberg, said the Kospi index plunged as much as 7% as AI jitters hurt chipmakers. Chosunbiz reported the KOSPI broke below 8000 and triggered a "sidecar," an automatic trading curb used to cool sharp moves. Investing.com noted the selloff deepened across Korea and dragged down Japanese chip suppliers too.
Several outlets tied the drop to fresh doubts about how much computing hardware the AI boom will actually need. Investing.com pointed to reports of efficiency gains at OpenAI and a cloud plan from Meta as triggers for the Asian slide. Finimize framed the move as "AI chip doubts" rattling markets, while Moneycontrol said the selloff risks deepening unease over whether the chip rally, fueled by a global boom in AI buildout, can be sustained.
There are signs the pressure is concentrated rather than broad. TechStock² reported the S&P 500 edged lower after hours as AI chip stocks dragged, while the wider market held up. Meanwhile, investingLive reported that foreign investors pulled a record $137 billion from Asian stocks as the AI rally forced portfolio rebalancing.
Why it matters: chipmakers like Samsung, SK Hynix and Nvidia's suppliers have been the engine of a historic market run, so any hint that AI demand could cool sends outsized shockwaves through global stocks and the savings tied to them.