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South Korea’s stock market rebounded strongly on Friday as semiconductor stocks rallied following better-than-expected earnings from US technology firms. The move lifted investor confidence in the long-term growth of artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The rally followed a few weeks of sharp declines as investors returned to AI-related technology stocks amid renewed optimism that global cloud providers will continue investing in advanced computing and semiconductor technologies.
The South Korean benchmark Kospi jumped over 18% to the highest level in about a month. SK Hynix Inc. soared by a record 28%, helped also by a rare direct share purchase by SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, while Samsung Electronics Co. rose around 26%.
Among others, Samsung Electro-Mechanics rose by almost 30%, and Hyundai Motor also delivered strong growth of almost 8%.
The rally brought back losses from earlier this week when concerns over valuations and Chinese memory-chip makers caused heavy selling in the Kospi Composite Index.
The rally followed Microsoft’s strong Azure cloud growth, while Amazon also went past expectations in its cloud computing business and reiterated plans to keep investing funds in AI infrastructure.
These results eased concerns that enterprise investments in AI might cool off, and investors started to rebalance toward semiconductor stocks, mainly the ones that provide high-performance memory chips and AI infrastructure.
Also Read: Samsung Posts Record Q2 Revenue as AI Memory Chip Demand Drives Profit Surge
Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Group, purchased 3,620 shares of SK Hynix in the open market, which was his first direct investment in the company. The deal, worth around 4.8 billion won (about $3.2 million), was seen as a signal of trust in the chipmaker’s long-term outlook.
At the same time, the South Korean government said it intends to move nearly $13.9 billion into its sovereign wealth fund for strategic investments in AI, which further supported the sector’s future outlook.
