South Korea’s central bank expects an AI-driven chip supercycle to continue, refuting “peak” concerns

Mars Finance news: In a report released by the Bank of Korea on July 13, it said the global semiconductor market is still experiencing a supply shortage, and that an AI-driven chip supercycle is expected to last for a long time, countering market concerns that the chip cycle has already peaked. The central bank’s analysis said the current chip cycle is different from past ones, mainly driven by competitive investment by companies to respond to fundamental changes in the industrial ecosystem brought by AI. It added that, since the market is currently dominated by customized products such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the pace of supply expansion is more constrained than in the past.

Recently, concerns about excessive investment in AI infrastructure and potential oversupply of memory chips triggered a selloff in tech stocks, and the share prices of Korean chip giants including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both fell significantly. In response, the Bank of Korea said that although there is still uncertainty about the speed of AI technology adoption and profit prospects, major investment banks such as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley generally predict that the global semiconductor market will remain strong at least through next year.