DeepSeek’s New Model Amid Funding Concerns Sends Asian Chip Stocks Down Over 2%

Bloomberg reported that Asian semiconductor stocks extended their decline on Monday, with the Bloomberg Asia Semiconductor Index dropping more than 2% to its lowest level since July—dragged down primarily by TSMC, SK Hynix, and Japan’s Advantest. South Korea’s KOSPI index posted its largest weekly drop since October 2008 last week; on Monday, it briefly plunged over 3% before recovering some losses. The Nikkei 225 fell as much as 2.3% intraday, while Taiwan’s TAIEX dropped 2%. Market concerns stem from two main factors: first, mounting financing pressure on U.S. AI infrastructure—CoreWeave’s fundraising capacity is under scrutiny, and IPO expectations for Anthropic and Nscale have cooled; second, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a new model update over the weekend, claiming faster inference speeds and lower resource consumption—raising questions about A