DeepSeek's new model, combined with AI financing concerns, has led to consecutive declines in Asian chip stocks.

BlockBeats news, October 19 - According to Bloomberg, Asian semiconductor stocks continued to weaken on Monday, with the Bloomberg Asia Chip Stock Index falling more than 2% to its lowest level since July, as TSMC, SK Hynix, and Japan's Advantest became the main drags.

Market concerns stem mainly from two aspects: first, financing pressure on US AI infrastructure continues to ferment, CoreWeave's financing capacity has been questioned, and the listing expectations of Anthropic and Nscale have also cooled; second, China's DeepSeek released a new model update over the weekend, claiming faster running speed and lower resource consumption, triggering market worries that the storage capacity required for AI models may decline and chip demand could be affected.

South Korea's Kospi index last week posted its biggest weekly drop since October 2008. On Monday the index fell more than 3% at one point before recovering some losses; Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell 2.3% at one point, and Taiwan's weighted index dropped 2%.

Kang DaeKwun, CEO of Life Asset Management, said market uncertainty is currently too high to judge when the Korean stock market will bottom, and the financing situation of US companies' AI projects is one of the main risks. He noted that the earnings performance of Korean chip companies remains highly dependent on continued investment by US companies in AI infrastructure. This week's earnings reports from tech giants such as Meta and Tesla will serve as an important window to observe the growth momentum of AI capital expenditure.