SoftBank sinks 8% as Asian chips track AI sell-off
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- SoftBank dropped 8.8% while Tokyo Electron lost 9% and Advantest slid 9.4%, tracking steep overnight losses on Wall Street.
- Kioxia plunged over 14% after a federal jury in Texas ordered the firm to pay $229 million in damages for infringing a Viasat patent related to computer memory technology.
- The sell-off followed a weak U.S. session where the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.47% and the VanEck Semiconductor ETF dropped almost 4%, with Arm Holdings down more than 5% and Micron, AMD, and Broadcom each losing more than 5%.
- TSMC raised its full-year capital expenditure forecast to $60–64 billion (up from $52–56 billion), but investors focused instead on whether the industry's aggressive investment cycle remains justifiable.
- U.S.-listed SK Hynix slumped over 13%, while South Korea's markets were closed for a public holiday; on Thursday, SK Hynix shares had closed over 11% lower.
- Andrew Jackson, strategist at Ortus Advisors, characterized the sell-off as an unwinding of crowded AI momentum trades rather than a deterioration in the sector's long-term fundamentals.
Why it matters: The 9–14% drops across major Asian chip names extend a sharp reversal in global AI-related shares after months of outsized gains. TSMC's raised capex guidance—now $60–64 billion—was meant as a bullish signal, yet investors read it instead as evidence the AI infrastructure spending cycle is becoming harder to justify, dragging exposed names from Tokyo to New York.
