SoftBank sinks 12% as Asia tech rout tracks declines in the U.S. - CNBC

SoftBank Group plummeted over 13% on Friday, leading a broad selloff in Asian tech stocks amid growing concerns over the rising cost of artificial intelligence infrastructure. The sell-off extended be... Read original →

Soaring AI infrastructure costs are triggering a cascade failure across the semiconductor value chain. Escalating capital intensity at 3nm and EUV nodes is squeezing IP licensors like Arm while forcing end-device makers—Apple included—to hike prices, undermining consumer demand. Geopolitical export controls from the U.S., Netherlands, and Japan impose asymmetric cost burdens on SMIC and Korean memory makers, eroding supply chain resilience. Qualcomm’s aggressive push into CPUs via RISC-V directly undermines Arm’s dominance in AI server chip design, exposing SoftBank’s fragile investment thesis. Over the next 12–24 months, a brutal shakeout looms: fabless firms and second-tier foundries lacking vertical integration will be marginalized, while TSMC (Taiwan, China) and Tokyo Electron—masters of advanced packaging and equipment autonomy—will dictate the new hierarchy. Without clearer ROI on AI capex, global tech valuations face further compression.