(Bloomberg) — Wall Street’s fears of business disruption caused by artificial intelligence are turning into a blessing for Asian stocks, fueling demand for the region’s leading chipmakers that dominate the industry’s supply chain.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index has risen more than 12% in 2026, in contrast to losses in US benchmarks as shares were sold off on fears that AI models may threaten the business of software, legal and real estate service providers. The S&P 500 is down 0.2% for the year, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 gauge has lost around 2%.
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The divergence underscores global funds’ shift of preference from AI pioneers burdened by massive spending toward hardware producers with strong pricing power, many of whom are in Asia. Surging memory chip prices have been a boon for the region’s heavyweights such as Samsung Electronics Co., while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s irreplaceable role as the world’s leading contract chipmaker has provided support for Taiwanese stocks.
“The main worry of the US is hyperscaler spending money,” said Richard Tang, head of research Hong Kong at Julius Baer. “Most of Asia’s tech exposure is upstream. Whoever wins in the end, upstream will still collect revenue from downstream players.”
The heavy presence in Asia of advanced chip manufacturers, semiconductor foundries and assemblers, which are crucial to the AI infrastructure, is a key reason behind the region’s resilience during the recent rout on Wall Street. Micron Technology Inc.’s latest comments on memory chip supply tightness and Nvidia Corp.’s on sustainable spending have reinforced such a perception.
In a sign of growing foreign demand, Samsung Electronics saw its biggest overseas buying Thursday, sending its shares up 6.4%. They rose again on Friday. Meanwhile, global investors also notched their third-largest weekly purchase in Taiwanese stocks in a holiday-shortened week.
Kioxia Holdings Corp.’s shares surged 15% on Friday after soaring AI demand helped the Japanese memory chipmaker deliver a better-than-anticipated results outlook.
That’s as the Nasdaq 100 Index fell 4.6% and shed about $1.5 trillion in market value over the past 10 sessions, hit by a selloff in software names and other stocks deemed at risk from new AI tools.
date: 2026-02-13 11:09:00
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