South Korean Stocks Fall as DeepSeek AI Model Raises Memory Chip Demand Fears

This is the second-order effect of the AI capex narrative cracking: if model efficiency improves dramatically, the marginal demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and the 'AI financing' ecosystem that underpins it gets repriced. Memory chips are the levered proxy for AI infrastructure spending, and Korea is the most concentrated expression of that trade — a selloff there signals institutional de-risking of the entire AI supply chain, which crypto has increasingly correlated with via AI-token and compute narratives.

South Korean stocks

Memory chips

South Korean stocks resumed declines on Monday as DeepSeek's latest model sparked concerns over memory chip demand and compounded market worries over AI financing.

South Korean Stocks Slide Again as DeepSeek Model Rattles Memory Chip Demand

DeepSeek's efficiency gains could paradoxically boost AI memory demand, but crypto miners will feel the squeeze first as HBM capacity gets prioritized over consumer GPUs.