Nvidia sell-off drags down Samsung, SK hynix shares

Korean chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK hynix saw their stock prices tumble Wednesday, following a plunge in Nvidia shares overnight.

Nvidia, the world's leading graphic processing unit supplier, continues to experience increased volatility as it faces an antitrust probe and growing fears that the recent artificial intelligence bubble may be about to burst. Having the GPU giant as a major client for advanced AI chip components, it is inevitable for the nation’s top two chipmakers to suffer share losses for some time, experts here say.

At the closing bell on Wednesday, Samsung shares slid 3.45 percent, while SK hynix, the key supplier to Nvidia, suffered a fall of 8.02 percent from the previous trading day.

On Tuesday, Nvidia shares fell 9.53 percent in regular trading. Its share price further declined by 2 percent in post-market trading, following a report that the US Justice Department sent a subpoena to the chipmaker as part of an antitrust investigation.

According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department is looking into the GPU giant over concerns it is making it harder for its buyers to switch to other suppliers and penalizes customers that do not exclusively use its AI chips.

In the wake of the AI boom, the GPU maker came to dominate over 90 percent of the advanced AI chip market, and its sales have been more than doubling each quarter.

Nvidia maintains that its market dominance comes from the quality of its products, and that customers have chosen the solution that is best for them.

Korean chipmakers have also been benefiting from the growth of Nvidia, supplying the High Bandwidth Memory chip that is a crucial component to speed up the performance of Nvidia's advanced GPUs.

“Nvidia has the big role in creating the burgeoning AI market, and it takes a large portion of the demand for the High Bandwidth Memory chips the Korean companies are strong in,” said Lee Jong-hwan, a system semiconductor engineering professor at Sangmyung University, explaining it is “inevitable” for Korean chipmakers to be affected by the GPU-maker.

The recent decline will likely be temporary, since the rise in demand for advanced GPU products is evident in the market, Lee added.

While it is too early to predict the direction of the antitrust probe, Nvidia's struggles would likely slow down the IT market overall, an industry official said.

"It is not only the HBM, but Nvidia has been contributing to the growth of the AI server market. So it is not just memory chips, but the overall IT market could be affected by Nvidia's fall," an industry official said.

Nvidia is deemed as the only company able to produce the "highest-level" AI server processors. Despite great investments tech giants are promising in the field of AI, Nvidia is expected to maintain its dominance in the market over the next few years.

Against this backdrop, if Nvidia were to come under the regulations of antitrust authorities and orders for advanced AI processors decrease, Korean firms would likely see their sales decrease in AI chips.

Behind Nvidia's success is its programming interface Cuda, which took root in the industry and became the favored platform for AI engineers, an industry official explained.

"Nvidia has no rival. There is AMD but it is far behind Nvidia in terms of market share and in the level of preference of AI developers," the official explained.