Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash
A single remark from Broadcom’s chief executive wiped billions off Asian chip stocks this week, as Hock Tan’s comparison of AI investing to gambling in a casino rattled markets from Seoul to Tokyo.
Speaking at the DBS Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore on Monday, October 12, 2026, Tan said many AI investors “have no clue what they are investing in” and have set “very extreme expectations only to find out that it’s almost like they are in a casino.”
The comments, made by one of the most closely watched executives in the semiconductor industry, landed at a moment when AI-related valuations have already drawn scrutiny from analysts worldwide. By the next trading day, the fallout was unmistakable.
Kospi plunges, Samsung and SK Hynix hit hard
South Korea’s Kospi index fell more than 6% intraday on October 13, one of its sharpest single-day declines in recent memory. The index’s two largest chipmakers bore the brunt of the selling.
- SK Hynix shares fell about 9-10%
- Samsung Electronics shares dropped roughly 7-8.8%
The scale of the drop was severe enough that the Korea Exchange briefly suspended program trading to curb volatility, the first such halt in two months, market news reports said.
The selloff was not driven by Tan’s remark alone. It coincided with a report, citing the South China Morning Post, that Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT, or ChangXin Memory Technologies, had made progress on a new, denser DRAM chip architecture. Investors worry that CXMT’s advance could challenge Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, the world’s three biggest memory chip makers, injecting a fresh competitive threat into an industry already nervous about stretched valuations.
Selloff spreads across the region and into the US
The pain was not confined to South Korea. Japan’s Nikkei index fell about 1.8%, while Tokyo Electron, a major chip equipment maker, dropped roughly 7%. In Taiwan, the stock exchange and chipmaker TSMC each lost about 2-2.5%.
The jitters had already crossed the Pacific before Asian markets opened. In the United States, Micron Technology shares had retreated about 2.5-3.9% in premarket and overnight trading, suggesting investors were bracing for trouble even before the full scale of the Asian rout became clear.
Taken together, the declines illustrate how tightly linked global chip markets have become, and how a single comment from an influential industry figure can ripple across continents within hours. The speed of the contagion also highlights just how fragile confidence in AI-linked equities has grown after a long run-up in valuations tied to expectations of explosive demand for computing power.
Tan clarifies: it’s investors, not OpenAI, that worry him
Despite the alarm his remark triggered, Tan sought to draw a distinction between the broader AI investment frenzy and specific companies. He said he does not believe OpenAI itself is overvalued, placing the blame instead on investors for setting extreme expectations without fully understanding the technology they are buying into. As evidence of genuine demand, he pointed to OpenAI’s annualized revenue of about $50 billion in September, calling it a sign of strong underlying momentum in the sector.
Tan also flagged a different, less-discussed risk to the AI boom’s trajectory. He said access to financing could become the industry’s biggest limiting factor, ranking it ahead of memory chip shortages as a constraint on growth. That assessment stands out because much of the recent market narrative around AI has centered on supply bottlenecks in memory chips and advanced semiconductors, rather than on the availability of capital to fund the buildout. If financing proves to be the true bottleneck, it could reshape how investors evaluate which companies are positioned to benefit from continued AI expansion.
Markets show early signs of stabilizing
By October 14, there were signs that the panic was beginning to ease. Sentiment across Asian markets started showing signs of stabilization as investor attention shifted away from Tan’s comments and toward Federal Reserve interest rate policy, market news reports said.
That pivot suggests the selloff, while sharp, may prove to be a short-term shock rather than the start of a sustained downturn, at least for now. Still, the episode underscores just how sensitive chip stocks have become to any suggestion that the AI investment boom rests on shaky foundations. Broadcom, led by Tan, sits at the center of the AI hardware ecosystem, supplying custom chips and networking components to major cloud and AI companies, which gives his public remarks outsized weight with investors.
Whether Tan’s casino comparison marks a turning point in how markets price AI-related risk, or simply a brief jolt before business resumes as usual, remains to be seen. For now, chipmakers in Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei are left counting their losses, while traders weigh the competing signals of a potential AI financing squeeze, an emerging Chinese memory rival, and a central bank decision that could soon dominate headlines in its own right.
