{"id":452739,"date":"2026-02-04T06:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/452739\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T06:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:25:07","slug":"asian-software-stocks-plunge-after-u-s-peers-decline-on-fears-over-ai-led-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/452739\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian software stocks plunge after U.S. peers decline on fears over AI-led disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Engineer working with statistical analysis report. Digital technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) concept.<\/p>\n<p>Kmatta | Moment | Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Wall Street&#8217;s fears around artificial intelligence-driven disruption affecting software companies made their way into Asia on Wednesday, with tech stocks in the region tracking declines overnight in U.S. peers.<\/p>\n<p>Japanese software firms in Asia led declines in the region. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/3626.T-JP\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TIS<\/a>, a major Japanese information technology services provider and systems integrator, plunged over 15%. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/4704.T-JP\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trend Micro<\/a> lost over 8%, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/2327.T-JP\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NS Solutions<\/a> declined nearly 7%.<\/p>\n<p>Shares of IT companies in India also dropped, with the the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/.NIFTYIT\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nifty IT index<\/a> down nearly 6%. Major IT firms <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/TCS-IN\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tata Consultancy Services<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/INFY-IN\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Infosys<\/a> dropped 5.8% and 6.2%, respectively, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/HCLTECH-IN\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">HCL<\/a> was down 5.5%<\/p>\n<p>Indian IT companies were among the top gainers on Tuesday, following the announcement of the country&#8217;s trade deal with the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese software companies sold-off as well. Shares of China&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/268-HK\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kingdee International Software<\/a> plunged more than 15%, while cloud major <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/700-HK\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tencent<\/a> fell 3.27%. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/9988-HK\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alibaba<\/a> lost over 1%, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/9888-HK\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Baidu<\/a> was down over 2%.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;AI has turned technology into an even more competitive sport,&#8221; said Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Software stocks were especially hard hit because Anthropic rolled out new tools for its Cowork product,&#8221; he said.\u00a0&#8220;It&#8217;s too soon to tell how useful the new tools will be, but investors decided to cut the valuation multiples of software stocks.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Software firms once valued for their sticky subscriptions and dependable renewals are now under scrutiny as AI threatens to automate workflows, squeeze pricing, and lower the barriers for new rivals to enter the market.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For the sector to rerate, companies must show that AI can act as a growth enabler rather than just a competitive threat \u2013 this may take longer than usual in the face of skeptical investors,&#8221; said Vey-Sern Ling, senior equity advisor at UBP.<\/p>\n<p>UBP prefers infrastructure software where the risk of AI disruption is low, as well as cybersecurity where there is pricing power and AI can potentially drive upsell opportunities, Ling said.<\/p>\n<p>Overnight in the U.S., shares of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/NOW\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ServiceNow<\/a>\u00a0tumbled nearly 7%, pushing its year-to-date losses to 28%.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/CRM\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Salesforce<\/a>\u00a0also dropped about 7%, bringing its 2026 decline to almost 26%.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/INTU\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Intuit<\/a>, the TurboTax parent, fell nearly 11% and is now down more than 34% year to date. Those moves contributed to the tech-heavy\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/.IXIC\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nasdaq Composite<\/a>\u00a0sliding 1.4% on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Engineer working with statistical analysis report. Digital technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) concept. Kmatta | Moment | Getty&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,11854,276,277,31372,1386,161,49,48,1799,100,17157,2940,61,25664],"class_list":["post-452739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alibaba-group-holding-ltd","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-baidu-inc","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-india","tag-markets","tag-nifty-it","tag-software","tag-technology","tag-tencent-holdings-ltd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}