South Korea rides AI wave, also overtakes India on m-cap chart
South Korea has surpassed India to become the world's sixth-largest equity market. This shift is attributed to strong performance from South Korean semiconductor companies. These firms are benefiting from booming demand within the artificial intel...
By ET Bureau |
Reuters
The Asian semiconductor companies are benefitting from the rising AI capital expenditure since memory chips are a part of the building blocks of the technology.
Mumbai: With a market capitalisation of over $5 trillion, South Korea has become the sixth largest equity market in the world, replacing India which has a market cap of $4.8 trillion, according to the data from Bloomberg.
Earlier, in the last week of May, Taiwan had jumped ahead of India after crossing $5 trillion in market cap. fpi selling a drag on india The two Asian markets are in a bull phase, helped by record financial performance from semiconductor manufacturers amid booming demand from the artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem. South Korean equities have gained 88% in 2026 so far while Taiwan has expanded market cap by 58%. India's market cap, on the other hand, has fallen by over 8% since the beginning of the current calendar year, impacted by heavy selling from foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) amid geopolitical uncertainties in West Asia. They have sold equities worth $24 billion (₹2.2 lakh crore) in the first five months of 2026 compared with $18.9 billion (₹1.7 lakh crore) in the whole of 2025.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, South Korea's two largest companies by market cap, have led the current rally in local equity markets with a year-to-date gain of 182% and 231% on bourses. The Asian semiconductor companies are benefitting from the rising AI capital expenditure since memory chips are a part of the building blocks of the technology.
