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Investing.com — Shares of Asia's leading semiconductor companies soared Thursday, following aftermarket gains as Nvidia's better-than-consensus earnings and guidance further fueled hype over an AI-driven demand boom. .
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:) rose as much as 10% after the clock in U.S. aftermarket trading, and its earnings guidance for the current quarter also beat street expectations.
The chipmaker's rally, which has been at the center of an AI-driven valuation surge over the past year, has spilled over into Asian chip stocks, particularly those with exposure to AI and Nvidia.
Japanese semiconductor inspection equipment manufacturer Advantest Co., Ltd. (TYO:), which is also a supplier to Nvidia, rose 5.1% and is within sight of a record high. Taiwan's TSMC (TW:) (NYSE:), the world's largest contract chip maker and a key supplier to Nvidia, rose 1%, near a record high.
Korean SK Hynix Co., Ltd. (KS:), which makes high-speed memory chips essential for AI development and has partnered with Nvidia, soared nearly 4%, while Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industries (TW:), also known as Foxconn, rose 0.5%.
Other chip makers and chip-related stocks rose. Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank Group Corp. (TYO:) rose 4.6%, tracking overnight gains in its British chip design unit. arm Holdings (NASDAQ:) recently doubled its market capitalization due to its exposure to AI.
Tokyo Electron Ltd. Japan's largest chipmaker by value (TYO:) rose 3.9%, while fiberglass products maker Nitto Boseki Co., Ltd. (TYO:) rose 8% after Morgan Stanley analysts upgraded the stock to overweight on expectations for increased demand for specialty glass from the AI industry.
semiconductor manufacturer Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TYO:) rose nearly 10% and was the best performer among Japanese indexes.
Thanks in part to gains in the tech sector, the Nikkei Stock Average hit an intraday high, surpassing levels last seen in 1989 before the big speculative bubble of the 1990s and 2000s unwound.
Nvidia's earnings will be boosted as rising demand for AI helps boost global chip demand, which is still reeling from a sharp drop in tech investment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This served to further strengthen the view that this was the case.
The rush in AI development was primarily driven by the release of generative AI, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT program, which prompted several large technology companies to roll out similar products of their own.
