Korea’s market unwind accelerated into circuit-breakers, with the KOSPI down about 34% in 25 trading days from its June 22 peak, while Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Japanese memory names were hit hard despite NVDA’s huge Korea-linked AI push. CXMT’s blockbuster Shanghai debut — 57.92 billion yuan raised, 466% first-day gain, and a 3.3 trillion yuan valuation — sharpened the memory-competition threat to Samsung, SK Hynix, and MU just as China starts domestic DUV output. On the US side, NVDA’s financing-heavy AI deal stack keeps growing — more than $750 billion of agreements, including talks for up to $250 billion tied to OpenAI and a reported up to $350 billion chip-buy plan — while NVDA’s CDS hit a record 82 bps, feeding round-tripping concerns. The sponsor segment pitched OBAI as Bond’s AI personal-security platform for enterprises, cities, and universities, with 1.4 million service requests and 10,000 emergencies handled over 8 years and more than $100 million spent building it.
Korea’s sell-side sidecar triggered at 9:03 a.m. local time, then a level-one circuit breaker halted all exchange trading for 20 minutes at 10:13.
The Korea exchange circuit breaker has now been triggered 8 times this year and only 14 times since the mechanism was created.
The KOSPI peaked on June 22 at 9,114-and-change and was down about 34% in 25 trading days and 36 calendar days by last night’s close.
Bespoke Investment Group’s Korean bear-market average is about 33.5% over about 229 days, so Korea matched the average decline in 36 days.
Samsung Electronics fell 13.39% in one day, its worst single session since October 2008, and SK Hynix fell about 14.65%; together they are more than half the index weight.
SK Hynix is now below its US offering price; its Nasdaq ADRs listed July 10, broke below $130 yesterday, and hit a record low since listing, leaving debut buyers underwater 18 days later.
The Nikkei closed down 3.95% at 62,364, its lowest since May, while Kioxia lost more than 18% in one session.
Despite the drawdown, the KOSPI is still up roughly 43% year to date; the drop from the June high only takes it back to April 15, and a roughly 71% fall from the June peak would be needed to erase the full-year gain.
On Friday, NVDA and SK Group announced a partnership valued by NVDA at more than $500 billion, including more than 2 gigawatts of AI data centers on the Korean Peninsula and help for SK Hynix on future HBM chips.
NVDA separately put $1 billion into Naver to more than triple the size of a Brookfield-linked data center; Naver stock jumped about 8% on the news.
Jensen Huang called Korea the "golden ages" and Seoul approved a roughly $1 trillion national plan for semiconductors, AI data centers, and robotics, while KB Financial launched a 150 billion won venture fund.
CXMT listed on Shanghai Star Market on Monday at 8.66 yuan, raised 57.92 billion yuan ($8.6 billion), and became the largest IPO in Asia this year and the biggest semiconductor listing in Star Market history.
CXMT opened at 49.50 yuan, closed up 466%, reached a roughly 3.3 trillion yuan market cap ($485 billion), became the most valuable mainland China-listed company, and passed ICBC’s 2.6 trillion yuan valuation.
CXMT’s first-day turnover was about 140 billion yuan, the first mainland-listed stock to cross 100 billion yuan in a single session.
CXMT’s prospectus says it held about 7.67% of the global DRAM market in 2025; it swung to 35.43 billion yuan of operating profit in Q1 from a 2.83 billion yuan loss a year earlier, and reports this month said Apple started testing its DRAM for China-sold devices.
China has begun mass-producing domestically developed immersion DUV lithography machines, with first deliveries to SMIC, Hua Hong, and CXMT; volumes are small, about 5 machines this year and roughly 20 in 2027, but the point is to raise the ceiling on Chinese memory capacity.
NVDA is working on more than $750 billion of new and potential AI agreements, including talks to guarantee as much as $250 billion so OpenAI can lease a data center project in Ohio, and a separate report that OpenAI may buy up to $350 billion of NVDA chips.
NVDA’s CDS spread hit a record 82 basis points, the cost of insuring its debt against default, the same week it announced three-quarters of a trillion dollars of deals.
Korea’s sidecar has now triggered for 10 consecutive trading sessions across the Kospi and Kosdaq, July had already been down 21% before yesterday, and with the latest drop both indexes are close to a 30% July decline.
Korea’s Financial Services Commission raised the cash deposit requirement for retail single-stock leveraged ETFs from 10 million won to 30 million won on July 24, excluding stocks, ETFs, and bonds from counting toward the minimum and moving implementation up to July 31.
SK Hynix reports Wednesday, July 29, with 14 Korean brokerages expecting 84.1 trillion won of revenue and 64.1 trillion won of operating profit, which would be an all-time record and above its full-year 2025 operating profit of 47.2 trillion won.
Samsung’s full Q2 report is Thursday, July 30; its preliminary numbers showed revenue up 129% year over year to 171 trillion won and operating profit up 18-fold to 89.4 trillion won, yet the stock fell about 7% after the release.
Kioxia reports Friday, July 31, while SK Hynix CEO Kwak No-Jeong’s claim that tight memory supply could persist past 2030 is set to be tested the day after a Chinese competitor got $9 billion of fresh capital and a $485 billion valuation.
Bond says it has handled 1.4 million service requests and 10,000 emergencies over 8 years and more than $100 million of development, with 95% enterprise retention and a land-and-expand sales motion.
Bond’s expansion has already reached a top-three US telecom sales team, four international cities endorsing it in April, a city with 270,000 residents buying licenses in June, a second city with over 1 million residents following in June, and an international university covering about 4,000 students, faculty, and staff in July.