The Japanese stock market hit a 34-year high today (13), closely tied to the AI industry.
Background:
OpenAI collaborates with TSMC to produce chips? Financial Times: Looking to resist Nvidia’s multi-billion dollar investment.
After a holiday on Monday for National Foundation Day, the Japanese stock market resumed trading today. The Nikkei index briefly surpassed 38,000 points, reaching its highest level in almost 34 years, and closed at 37,963.97 points, up 2.9%. The general interpretation is that the surge in US stocks, coupled with the weakening of the yen against the US dollar, has contributed to this increase. However, many analysts believe that the semiconductor and AI waves are the biggest drivers behind the rise of Japanese stocks.
Support from AI industry:
Apart from Tokyo Electron, a semiconductor equipment manufacturer that surged 13%, the Japanese stock market has directly benefited from the surge of US semiconductor company ARM since its quarterly earnings report on February 8. ARM has risen nearly 93% in the past three trading days, almost doubling in value. ARM also stated last week that its latest instruction set can generate licensing fees twice as much as the previous version, expecting a 15% increase in total licensing fee revenue in the future. This proves that ARM can effectively expand the profit of the new chip market under the high demand for AI.
ARM’s rise is naturally beneficial to its largest shareholder, SoftBank, whose stock price has risen nearly 30% in the past three trading days. However, besides ARM, the main factors affecting the US and Japanese stock markets are NVIDIA and TSMC, which dominate the AI base chip production line.
Huang Renxun’s influence on the AI industry:
With NVIDIA briefly surpassing Amazon and temporarily becoming the fourth largest market-cap company in the US during Monday’s trading (12th), it shows the strong market demand for AI chips. NVIDIA closed at $722.48 per share, with a market value of approximately $1.78 trillion. But the biggest spiritual leader of NVIDIA, Huang Renxun, has been publicly releasing news that seems more like a prophet of AI demand, sparking investors’ imagination.
Huang Renxun first pointed out that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is looking for investors in the Middle East to raise $7 trillion to build chip factories around the world. It was later reported that TSMC has accepted the commission to manage and utilize advanced processes to manufacture AI computation chips, solving the global shortage of computing power.
In addition, on the 12th, Huang Renxun also stated at the World Government Summit held in Dubai that the endless pursuit of AI chips will eventually be constrained. He then called on leaders from various countries that the localization of AI is unstoppable.
Currently, Huang Renxun seems to have extended a friendly greeting to OpenAI, the challenger in the AI chip market, as OpenAI enters the chip supply chain. The opponents that may block their way are all the chip design and manufacturing companies in the market. Huang Renxun also serves as a reminder to the leading global chip manufacturers, TSMC and Samsung Electronics, that in the AI market, collaboration and competition can coexist and be respectable.