# Chip stocks are getting hammered — but China's hottest new listing is holding up > Source: > Published: 2026-07-28 05:28:00+00:00 # Chip stocks are getting hammered — but China's hottest new listing is holding up [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com) South Korean and Japanese semiconductor heavyweights lead a broad retreat as investors pulled back from big winners in the AI boom. - Asian chip stocks tumbled as investors pulled back from AI trades. - China's CXMT slipped but held on to most of its blockbuster debut gains. - China's memory-chip expansion is accelerating amid a push for self-reliance. Chip stocks sold off across Asia on Tuesday, with South Korean and Japanese semiconductor heavyweights leading a broad retreat as investors pulled back from some of the biggest winners of the AI boom. [South Korea's Kospi](https://markets.businessinsider.com/index/kospi) fell as much as 11% by 12:15 p.m. local time after triggering the circuit breaker. Undex heavyweights [Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix](https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-sk-hynix-have-an-edge-japan-cant-match-kioxia-dealmaker-2026-7) lost as much as 13% and 14%, respectively. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 declined 5%. [Memory-chip maker Kioxia](https://www.businessinsider.com/best-performing-non-us-stocks-ai-boom-korea-taiwan-japan-2026-7) — one of the market's standout performers in the first half of the year — slumped 18%. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. fell over 3%, dragging the Taiex index down as much as 4.7%. Even [China's CXMT Corp.](https://www.businessinsider.com/cxmt-stock-price-ipo-688825-ticker-shanghai-changxin-ram-chip-2026-7) wasn't entirely spared. Shares in China's hottest new chip stock fell as much as 7.7% at the open before recovering to trade 1.6% lower by midday. The pullback barely dented Monday's 466% debut surge, leaving the stock holding on to the vast majority of its gains. CXMT's first-day rally gave it a market value of roughly 3.3 trillion yuan, or about $487 billion, making it the most valuable company listed on a mainland Chinese exchange. The blockbuster debut underscored investor enthusiasm for China's efforts to build a homegrown semiconductor industry. **China's chip push** That optimism is supported by expectations of a multiyear expansion in China's memory-chip industry. Official data released on Monday showed profits in the country's chipmaking sector surged more than 2,500% in the first half of the year. Chinese memory-chip makers have significantly sped up their capacity-expansion plans for the next few years, Bernstein analyst Qingyuan Lin wrote in a Monday note. "As the [AI demand](https://www.businessinsider.com/kimi-k3-ai-model-moonshot-investors-alibaba-cloud-tencent-stock-2026-7) continues to grow and [Nvidia](/glossary/nvidia) continues to be banned by both Chinese and US government from shipping to China, we believe the advanced logic capacity expansion could further accelerate as well,**"** Lin wrote. The latest weakness in chip stocks also followed a report from "The Information" that a Chinese state-backed company has begun producing chipmaking machines domestically. While the technology still trails the world's most advanced equipment, it marks another step in China's push to reduce its reliance on foreign suppliers and strengthen its semiconductor industry. ## AI trade jitters The broader chip selloff comes as investors grow more concerned about the huge amounts of money flowing into AI and the increasingly close financial ties among chipmakers, cloud providers, and AI developers. The fear is that weakness in one part of the AI trade could quickly spread across the rest of the sector. Those concerns weighed on Nvidia on Monday. Its shares fell about 5%, allowing Apple to overtake it as the world's most valuable publicly traded company. [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/kospi-stock-index-sk-hynix-samsung-nikkei-kioxia-cxmt-2026-7) Get AI news in your inbox Daily digest of what matters in AI.