How the AI Boom Is Splitting Asia’s Stock Markets in Two

The Asian equity landscape in 2026 is being pulled in opposite directions by the same force: artificial intelligence. While the AI boom has turned South Korea and Taiwan into the world’s best-performing stock markets, it has simultaneously drained capital from Hong Kong’s secondary market. This is not simply a matter of one market winning and another losing. Rather, a structural capital rotation is underway that is redefining the role each financial center plays in the global AI supply chain.

The divergence in numbers

The gap in performance is stark and quantifiable.

Hong Kong’s persistent weakness. The Hang Seng Index (HSI) declined 2.8% through February 2026, compared to a 1.1% gain for the Shanghai Composite. More dramatically, the Hang Seng TECH Index, which tracks the city’s largest tech companies, fell 9.7% year-to-date by late February . By mid-June, the HK50 benchmark had fallen to roughly 24,411 points, losing 4.9% over a single month . Data from HKEX showed the HSI dropped a further 2.3% in May 2026 alone .

South Korea and Taiwan’s historic rallies. At the other extreme, South Korean and Taiwanese equities have delivered generational returns. South Korea’s Kospi index rallied approximately 90% in 2026 and surged roughly 226% in dollar terms since the beginning of 2025 . It breached the 7,000 level for the first time in May 2026 . Taiwan’s TAIEX has climbed about 92% in dollar terms from the start of 2025, with its total market capitalization reaching approximately $4.3 trillion, surpassing the United Kingdom’s .

The trillion-dollar concentration. A handful of companies sit at the center of this rally. Asia’s three most valuable firms are all semiconductor manufacturers: TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix. SK Hynix joined the trillion-dollar market cap club in late May 2026, following TSMC and Samsung . The performance of these three names now overwhelmingly determines the direction of their home indices, creating significant concentration risk .

Why Hong Kong is underperforming

The Hong Kong stock market’s decline is not primarily driven by a flight of foreign capital, but by a decisive rotation of mainland Chinese money.

Mainland capital is going home. Chinese investors are pulling record sums out of Hong Kong-listed H-shares and rotating into onshore AI and semiconductor plays that are tied more directly to Beijing’s industrial policy goals . The Southbound Stock Connect channel, which saw record net inflows of HK$1.4 trillion in 2025, has shifted direction. Mainland retail and institutional investors are instead chasing domestic AI chip stocks, a dynamic one analysis described as creating “extreme valuation dispersion” within the sector . As one report put it, "for now, mainland investors appear to see the domestic market as the purer expression" of the China AI theme .

An index composition problem. The Hang Seng and Hang Seng TECH indices are structurally misaligned with the current AI investment cycle. They are weighted heavily toward established internet and e-commerce giants — such as Tencent, Alibaba, and Meituan — and traditional financials. These sectors are not direct beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure spending boom. Furthermore, the few Hong Kong-listed semiconductor companies tend to be recent, small-cap listings focused on China’s import-substitution chip narrative rather than the global AI supply chain .

The engine behind South Korea and Taiwan’s surge

The rally in Seoul and Taipei is not built on speculation alone. It is underpinned by a genuine surge in earnings tied directly to the AI infrastructure buildout.

Unmatched demand for memory and logic chips. The AI super-cycle has created insatiable demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and advanced logic chips. SK Hynix and Samsung dominate the global HBM supply, while TSMC manufactures the world's most advanced AI processors. This has translated into a historic earnings surge: Samsung’s chip revenues reportedly leaped nearly 50 times in one quarter, and the overall sector is projected to reach global semiconductor revenues of US$975 billion in 2026 .

A global reordering of markets. The flow of institutional money reflects this new reality. According to HSBC data, Taiwan’s stock market has surpassed Canada to become the world’s sixth-largest, and South Korea has overtaken the UK to claim the eighth spot . The Invesco 2026 Midyear Outlook explicitly identifies “North Asia, particularly Taiwan and South Korea” as the primary beneficiaries of the AI-driven semiconductor cycle . Strategists at Goldman Sachs have remained overweight on the sector, and Citi has noted that global long-term investors are accumulating Asian tech stocks specifically for their role in the semiconductor supply chain .

A narrow but powerful rally. The strength in these markets is acutely concentrated. The Kospi’s performance is overwhelmingly driven by Samsung and SK Hynix, just as the TAIEX is propelled by TSMC . While some fund managers have begun rotating profits from Korea and Taiwan back into Chinese AI names on valuation grounds, the broader structural flow of institutional capital remains pointed at the semiconductor supply chain .

The structural reordering of Asia’s capital markets

Beyond the year-to-date performance figures, a fundamental shift is occurring in how Asia’s financial hubs fit into the AI economy.

• Hong Kong’s role is evolving from trading to listing. While secondary market performance has suffered, Hong Kong is thriving as a primary fundraising venue. It is increasingly becoming the offshore listing destination for Chinese AI and semiconductor companies seeking international capital. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, funds raised through IPOs and follow-on offerings reached $13 billion, a five-year high . The city is being deliberately repositioned as a “global technology hub” by its government, which has allocated at least HK$30 billion to develop a tech hub in the border area and is actively courting Korean tech firms . The pipeline for 2026 is projected to raise HK$320–350 billion across roughly 200 companies .
• Korea and Taiwan have become the irreplaceable hardware layer. The AI supply chain for state-of-the-art fabrication and memory remains almost entirely concentrated in Taiwan and South Korea. As long as global AI infrastructure spending continues to grow, these markets will hold a central position in global equity flows .

What appears on the surface as a simple market divergence is, in truth, a capital rotation that is permanently redrawing Asia’s financial map. Hong Kong is fighting to become the primary venue where the next generation of Chinese AI companies raise capital. South Korea and Taiwan are where the world’s investors place their money to own the physical hardware that makes AI possible.