Everyone was watching Jensen Huang in Taiwan, but South Korea was where the AI trade was heating up - Business Insider

While NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang drew investor attention at a major tech show in Taiwan, the real market excitement was unfolding in South Korea, where tech stocks surged amid expectations of significant... Read original →

Surging AI compute demand is triggering a technological cascade across South Korea’s semiconductor sector: HBM3E and GDDR7 memory have become critical enablers for 3nm logic chips, with Samsung and SK Hynix leveraging EUV-based stacking to dominate. Meanwhile, LG Innotek’s advanced substrates and Samsung Electro-Mechanics’ high-frequency MLCCs are quietly forming the AI hardware foundation. Geopolitical compliance risks loom—U.S. export controls could force Korean firms into costly supply chain bifurcation between China and the U.S., while TSMC’s aggressive U.S. expansion intensifies competition for talent and tools. Intel, partnering with Micron, is pushing CXL standards to undermine Korean memory hegemony, and Taiwan, China fabs are scaling CoWoS capacity to capture advanced packaging share. Over the next 18 months, Korea will evolve from a memory foundry into an AI systems integrator—but its heavy reliance on NVIDIA exposes earnings volatility if the AI capex cycle stalls.