<div id="readability-page-1"><div>[HONG KONG] The hunt is on for new Asian equity winners from the artificial intelligence (AI) trade, as a technological shift and bubble fears reshape the investment universe.As the massive stock rally unleashed by the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT enters its fourth year, leading regional beneficiaries, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and SK Hynix, are flagging. Investor attention is turning instead to smaller, lesser-known names such as MediaTek and Zhongji Innolight.High-profile firms that are still essential to the nuts-and-bolts requirements of AI are likely to see their stocks bounce back after some cooling off. But they could start sharing the spotlight as focus progresses from training of large language models to everyday application of the technology, as well as how to bring down the costs.“The market is pricing in a new narrative, a new paradigm, which is: what if the dominant LLM isn’t just OpenAI? And that’s why everything is happening,” said Andy Wong, head of multi-asset investment at Pictet Asset Management in Hong Kong. “You need to digest what’s going on, recalibrate, and then apply a new risk premium.”The chain reaction was set off last month with Alphabet’s launch of an upgraded Gemini model and its reported deals with other firms for its in-house AI chips. Amazon.com’s latest accelerator added to the shift away from AI stock trades that had concentrated on OpenAI and dominant semiconductor firm Nvidia.Japan’s SoftBank Group, seen as a proxy for OpenAI given the close ties between the two companies, saw its stock slump 38 per cent in November to cap its worst month in 25 years. Shares of Nvidia’s key foundry TSMC and memory provider SK Hynix fell 4 per cent each last month, letting some steam out of their big rallies.While ChatGPT is being threatened by a growing host of competitors, Nvidia’s AI training processors are losing market attention as application-specific integrated circuits come more to the fore. With that, investors are becoming concerned about negative implications for product pricing.If LLMs become commoditised, “the ones with cheaper costs will become the winner”, said Han Sangkyoon, chief investment officer at Quad Investment Management in Seoul. He expects the next six months to be crucial in “how the bubble created by Nvidia and OpenAI could burst.”Rather than completely abandon the AI trade, investors are moving to other stocks. MediaTek, a Taiwan-based chip designer working with Alphabet, logged its best week since 2002 following the Gemini debut. South Korea’s IsuPetasys, which supplies printed circuit boards for Alphabet, climbed 18 per cent to a fresh record high last week.Such moves highlight how, regardless of the ultimate brand name or which US megacap sits at the top of the supply chain, there is a string of Asian suppliers that can reap rewards.“Around 90 per cent of the hardware manufactured globally, which is fitting into data centres – servers, testing environment, anything you need from manufacturing the chips, memory cards, or even testing, cooling systems – all comes from Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Thailand, and even mainland China,” said Egon Vavrek, head of emerging markets and Asia equities at BlackRock.While the US and China are competing in the AI arms race, their supply chains are still somewhat dependent on each other. Shandong-based optical transceiver maker Zhongji revenue, for example, gets 22 per cent of its revenue from Alphabet and 11 per cent from Amazon. Its stock rose 11 per cent last week to a new peak.Not that the established leaders of the AI boom are done. TSMC has the most advanced chipmaking technology and provides outsourced manufacturing for all the major players. It’s shares are still poised for a third-straight year of gains that has taken its market value to more than US$1 trillion.SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics together account for over 90 per cent of global market share in the high-bandwidth memory that is another essential component of AI technology, according to research from Macquarie Group. Even as SK Hynix shares have more than tripled this year, bearish hedges have dropped. Short interest in the stock has fallen to 0.6 per cent of its free float from more than 3 per cent in May, according to data from S&amp;P Global.Investors are always looking for new ideas though, whether due to newsflow, nervousness over valuations of outperformers, or even constraints on holdings in their portfolios.“AI remains front and centre of tech investors’ minds, even after three years into the theme,” said Timothy Fung, head of Asia equity strategy at JPMorgan Private Bank in Hong Kong. “Opportunities are evolving across the AI supply chain, but remain linked to physical infrastructure.” BLOOMBERG</div></div>

联发科

投资者在人工智能股票交易中的关注点正从 OpenAI 和 Nvidia 等主要参与者转向 MediaTek 和中基光电等较小的亚洲公司。这一转变是由于技术变化和泡沫担忧，新的重点是成本效益解决方案和应用特定集成电路。尽管有所降温，像台积电和 SK 海力士这样的成熟领导者仍然因其先进的技术和市场份额而具有重要地位。人工智能投资格局持续演变，尤其是在亚洲，供应链中存在着机会

亚洲 AI 股票交易的重大变动推动了对新明星的寻找