Asia becomes new epicenter of AI stock rally as chipmakers surge
Seoul’s KOSPI crossed 7,000 and then 7,384.56 as TSMC, Samsung and SK hynix turned Asia into AI’s new stock-market center.
Asia has become the new center of gravity in the AI stock rally, with Seoul at the heart of a move that has pushed South Korea’s KOSPI to 7,384.56 and lifted Samsung Electronics above a $1 trillion market value. The shift marks a clear turn in investor focus: the AI trade is no longer concentrated only in U.S. megacap software and cloud names, but in the chipmakers and memory suppliers that power the entire system.
Reuters said Asia’s three most valuable companies are now Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, a ranking that underscores how central semiconductors have become to AI. The market has been repricing not just advanced chips, but also high-bandwidth memory, foundry capacity, equipment suppliers, packaging and assembly, all of which sit deeper in the supply chain than the names that dominated the early AI rally.
The earnings line has given the move credibility. TSMC reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of NT$1,134.10 billion and net income of NT$572.48 billion on April 16, with revenue up 35.1% from a year earlier. The company also projected full-year 2026 revenue growth of more than 30% in U.S. dollar terms. Samsung followed on April 30 with first-quarter revenue of KRW 133.9 trillion and operating profit of KRW 57.2 trillion, both records, while its Device Solutions division posted an 86% quarter-on-quarter sales jump. SK hynix reported first-quarter revenue of 52.5763 trillion won, operating profit of 37.6103 trillion won and net profit of 40.3459 trillion won on April 22, saying demand was being supported by expanded AI infrastructure investment and sales of HBM, high-capacity server DRAM modules and eSSDs.
The enthusiasm has also spilled into retail trading. Reuters reported that leveraged buying of KOSPI shares by South Korean retail investors hit a record 25 trillion won in late April, and quoted office worker Kwon Soon-kuk saying he was “chasing the market after missing the post-pandemic rally in 2020.” SK hynix shares rose 13% to a record high on May 4 after U.S. tech firms raised AI data-center spending plans, a sign that global capital is still chasing the next link in the hardware chain.
The scale of the move has raised the same question investors always face when one theme dominates a market: how long the concentration can last. For now, Asia’s chipmakers have become the must-own names in AI, and the profits, leverage and strategic power of the trade are shifting east.
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