Investing.com — U.S. chip stocks extended losses in premarket trading Tuesday, building on Monday’s declines after a broad selloff swept through Asian semiconductor names overnight as investors pulled back from AI-linked stocks amid growing worries about how the industry’s infrastructure buildout is being financed and rising competitive pressure from China.

Shares in memory chip stocks Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital fell about 4% each by 04:46 ET (08:46 GMT). Intel shed 3.2%, Marvell Technology slid and Applied Materials lost about 2.8% each. AMD dipped more than 3%, as did SK Hynix’s newly-listed U.S. shares, and Super Micro Computer slipped 2.9%.

The rout began Monday, when Nvidia shares fell 5% in New York, stripping the AI chip giant of its title as the world’s most valuable listed company. The drop came after The Wall Street Journal reported the company is in talks to provide around $250 billion toward a massive data-center project tied to OpenAI. Apple overtook Nvidia after climbing about 25% so far this year.

The weakness carried into Asian trading Tuesday, as investors pulled back from some of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom. South Korea’s Kospi tumbled roughly 11%, triggering its eighth circuit breaker of the year; the index was briefly halted after falling 8%, then extended losses to close down 10.8% once trading resumed.

Index heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix ended the day 13% and 15% lower, respectively. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 fell 4%, with memory-chip maker Kioxia, one of the market’s strongest performers in the first half of the year, sinking 18%.

SK Hynix, a major supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips to Nvidia, has been among the biggest beneficiaries of the AI spending surge, leaving its stock especially exposed to swings in investor sentiment toward the sector.

Analysts attributed the pullback to several factors, including worries over how AI infrastructure is being financed, China’s advancing chip capabilities, and intensifying competition from Chinese semiconductor firms.

Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT surged 466% on its Shanghai debut on July 27, in Asia’s largest IPO of 2026. The listing raised $8.6 billion and pushed CXMT’s market value to 3.3 trillion yuan, or about $487.73 billion, nearly half the valuation of U.S. rival Micron, according to Reuters.

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