Chipmakers across Asia rallied on Thursday after Nvidia’s stock closed at a record high, once again positioning the US-based tech firm as the world’s most valuable company.
With its market capitalisation hitting $3.77 trillion, Nvidia surpassed Microsoft and triggered widespread momentum across the semiconductor sector in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
As investor sentiment shifted on renewed artificial intelligence (AI) demand, key suppliers and partners of Nvidia posted solid gains, even as concerns over trade restrictions to China linger.
SK Hynix, TSMC, and Foxconn ride Nvidia-linked demand surge
South Korea’s SK Hynix, a major supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips used in Nvidia’s AI systems, jumped 3.53% on Thursday.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which manufactures Nvidia’s advanced GPUs, climbed 0.47%.
Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, gained 0.77%.
Foxconn is involved in building “AI factories” in collaboration with Nvidia—massive data-processing hubs that integrate Nvidia’s chips for tasks including autonomous driving and training large language models (LLMs).
These companies have seen increasing investor interest due to their direct ties with Nvidia’s production and deployment pipeline.
Analysts suggest the broader rally is not just a reflection of Nvidia’s valuation, but a deeper recognition of the crucial role Asian manufacturers play in the global AI hardware ecosystem.
Japanese chipmakers post sharp gains, Arm exposure lifts SoftBank
Several Japanese tech firms with exposure to AI chip development also saw their shares climb.
Semiconductor equipment maker Advantest surged 3.93%, hitting an all-time high.
Tokyo Electron and Lasertec rose 2.13% and 1.57% respectively, while Renesas Electronics gained 2.22%.
SoftBank, which holds a significant stake in UK-based chip designer Arm, advanced 4.38%.
Arm is viewed as a key beneficiary of the AI boom, especially with companies seeking more power-efficient chip designs for edge computing and AI inference.
SoftBank’s gains reflect growing investor belief that Arm’s architecture could play a larger role in shaping future AI workloads, especially as competition with Nvidia, AMD and Intel evolves.
Nvidia’s all-time high renews AI sector confidence despite export curbs
Nvidia shares rose more than 4% on Wednesday, closing at $154.31.
This marked a fresh all-time high, surpassing the previous record of $149.43 set on January 6.
With this, Nvidia overtook Microsoft in market capitalisation, becoming the most valuable publicly listed company in the world.
The milestone comes as AI demand continues to expand, lifting confidence in chipmakers despite geopolitical challenges.
In April, the Trump administration imposed fresh curbs on AI chip exports to China, effectively halting sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips.
These were designed to meet earlier restrictions, but the latest move blocked their delivery, prompting Nvidia to forecast an $8 billion hit to revenue and a $4.5 billion inventory write-down.
Even so, investors remain focused on the company’s leading position in AI training and inference chips, especially in data centres and enterprise software.
Kingsley Jones, CIO at Jevons Global, noted the upbeat mood, citing a fall in trade war concerns.
He observed that investors are once again backing Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean chip stocks, which had previously seen volatility due to fears around tariffs and restrictions.
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