South Korea’s Kospi fell 10.8% on July 28, triggering temporary trading halts and steep losses in chip stocks as investors extended a global semiconductor sell-off over concerns that demand for AI chips may be overhyped.

Samsung Electronics dropped 13.4%, and SK hynix slid 14.7%.

SK hynix’s Nasdaq-listed American depositary receipts closed at US$143 on July 27, below their US$149 offering price.

The decline hit two companies highly exposed to AI memory demand. SK hynix held 57% of high-bandwidth memory revenue in the third quarter of 2025, vs. Samsung’s 22%.

Reports also weighed on sentiment that a Shanghai state-backed company has begun mass-producing domestic immersion deep ultraviolet lithography machines, with first deliveries due in 2026. The machine have single-exposure capability at 28nm-class features.

Chinese competition appears more immediate in conventional dynamic random-access memory than in AI memory, with CXMT about four years behind in high-bandwidth memory, according to cited estimates.

🔗 Source: Associated Press