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<\/a><\/p>\nPublished On 3 Jun 20263 Jun 2026<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s stock market has hit an all-time high as a global buying frenzy driven by AI shows no signs of slowing down.<\/p>\n
The Nikkei 225 rose nearly 3 percent on Wednesday, lifting the benchmark index above 68,000 for the first time.<\/p>\n
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The latest surge continues a banner year for Japan\u2019s stock market, which is up nearly 33 percent so far in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cInvestor enthusiasm over the AI boom is helping drive Asian equity markets higher,\u201d Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile strong demand for high-end chips has seen the top semiconductor companies in Taiwan and South Korea rally strongly, this is also benefiting Japanese markets, which are also getting some tailwind from a weak yen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Japanese firms involved in the semiconductor business led the gains.<\/p>\n
Tokyo Electron, Japan\u2019s largest manufacturer of semiconductor equipment, soared as much as 14 percent in morning trading.<\/p>\n
Advantest, which supplies testing equipment to the semiconductor industry, rose more than 5.5 percent.<\/p>\n
Shin-Etsu Chemical, a supplier of silicon wafers used in integrated circuits, gained about 4 percent.<\/p>\n
Softbank, which is heavily invested in AI models, chips and data centers, fell about 3 percent, after overtaking auto giant Toyota\u00a0on Monday\u00a0to become Japan\u2019s biggest company by market capitalisation.<\/p>\n
Ferocious demand for AI chips has been driving record-breaking rallies in stock markets across the globe, taking key indexes in the US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan to record highs.<\/p>\n
During the past month, three memory chip makers \u2013 South Korea\u2019s SK Hynix and\u00a0Samsung Electronics,\u00a0and US-based Micron \u2013\u00a0entered the elite club of firms with a market\u00a0capitalistion of at least $1 trillion.<\/p>\n
Only 17 companies have hit the milestone, all but five of which are based in the United States.<\/p>\n
Despite concerns about the sustainability of the sky-high valuations in the sector among some investors, tech companies are continuing to commit huge sums to AI-related infrastructure.<\/p>\n
US tech giants are expected to spend about $800bn on AI-related capital investment in 2026, according to Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n
Google parent company Alphabet on Monday became the latest Silicon Valley giant to outline its AI-related investment plans, announcing that it would sell $80bn worth of shares to help fund expected capital expenditures of $180-190bn in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benchmark Nikkei 225 tops 68,000 for first time as AI-driven buying frenzy shows no signs of slowing down.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,1758,219,3510,1759,111,43,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-458556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-asia-pacific","tag-economy","tag-financial-markets","tag-japan","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}