South Korea’s two largest semiconductor companies suffered their steepest one-day stock declines since the global financial crisis on Monday as foreign investors rushed to lock in profits after a prolonged rally fueled by the artificial-intelligence boom.
Shares of Samsung Electronics, South Korea’s largest company and one of the world’s biggest producers of memory chips, fell 12.31%. SK Hynix, a South Korean chipmaker that has emerged as Nvidia’s leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI accelerators, plunged 12.47%.
The declines marked the worst daily performances for Samsung since October 2008 and for SK Hynix since December 2008, according to Korea Exchange data.
Foreign investors sold a net $2.7 billion worth of shares on South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index, while institutional investors unloaded an additional $2.9 billion. Domestic retail investors moved in the opposite direction, purchasing a net $5.6 billion in stocks as prices tumbled.
Market participants said much of the selling reflected profit-taking after months of strong gains in Korean semiconductor shares. Samsung and SK Hynix have been among the biggest beneficiaries of surging global demand for AI infrastructure, with investors betting that spending on data centers and advanced memory chips would continue to accelerate.
The selloff appeared largely specific to South Korea rather than a sign of weakening confidence in the global AI trade. While the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite ended lower overnight, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 2.04%, indicating that investors remained broadly constructive on the outlook for the chip industry.
The sharp decline also reshaped the closely watched market-value race between South Korea’s two chip giants. SK Hynix had overtaken Samsung Electronics in market capitalization based on common shares a day earlier, but Monday’s losses significantly narrowed the gap.
SK Hynix ended the session with a market capitalization of $1.187 trillion, only $5.6 billion ahead of Samsung Electronics’ $1.182 trillion. Samsung briefly reclaimed the top spot during intraday trading before SK Hynix regained the lead by the close. Samsung, however, remains the country’s most valuable listed company when preferred shares are included.
For global investors, the moves are being closely watched because Samsung and SK Hynix together account for a substantial portion of worldwide memory-chip production and play a critical role in supplying the hardware underpinning the AI boom.
Analysts said it remains unclear whether Monday’s rout marks the beginning of a broader correction in Korean technology stocks or simply represents investors taking profits after one of the sector’s strongest rallies in years.
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