Asian stock markets plummeted on Thursday as fears of a slowdown in the AI boom triggered a tech sell-off.
South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index sank as much as 9.3pc, a decline steep enough to trigger circuit breakers which automatically halted trading. Japan’s Nikkei was down as much as 5pc.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix – South Korea’s two largest tech giants – led the fallers, extending recent declines in the sector as investors question the longevity of the AI boom.
Samsung plunged 10.2pc, while SK Hynix fell 7.2pc in Seoul.
In Tokyo, OpenAI investor SoftBank Group plunged 9.1pc, while chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron dropped 6.3pc.
Adding to the gloom were results from AI giant Anthropic, which said its third-quarter sales had risen to nearly $17bn (£12.9bn).
The tech giant, which is one of the world’s leading developers of AI, told an investor meeting on Wednesday that its revenue had more than trebled since the first quarter of 2026.
However, the 45pc growth disappointed some investors, who had seen increases of 139pc in the prior quarter.
It came after stocks fell on Wall Street on Wednesday night following higher-than-expected US inflation of 3.7pc.
All three major American indices dropped, but the tech-heavy Nasdaq suffered the deepest declines, losing nearly 2pc.
Traders increased bets on the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates later this month following the inflation figures.
Asian markets are heavily exposed to the AI boom because the continent is home to some of the largest semiconductor companies which produce chips fuelling the sector’s expansion.
South Korea’s Kospi, which is heavily exposed to semiconductor stocks, has slid more than 15pc this week in a sign of the nervousness over possible overexposure.
Sharp falls earlier this week had also triggered a brief halt in trading.
Charu Chanana, an analyst at Saxo Bank, said: “The sell-off in Asia looks less like a sudden deterioration in technology fundamentals and more like a repricing of the cost of capital.
“Investors are not questioning whether AI demand exists.
“They are increasingly questioning what price they should pay for that growth when interest rates are high, volatile and potentially moving higher again.”
In the US, as well as a fall for the Nasdaq, the S&P 500 dropped 1.1pc and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.1pc.
Nvidia lost 3.2pc, Broadcom was down 3.1pc and Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, fell 5.7pc.
Hiroshi Namioka, a strategist at T&D Asset Management, told Bloomberg: “Investors are cutting risk for now and shifting as much money as possible into safe-haven assets. We’re seeing a fairly strong, typical risk-off move.”