Topic
Capital preference for data-center hardware, chips and networking suppliers over application-layer software as the way to express AI exposure.
Foreign investors sold a net $14.16 billion of Korean stocks and $5.81 billion of bonds in September, Bank of Korea data showed Friday. August's net stock buying was $40 million, after selling that began in January.
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South Korea's Kospi fell to about 5,550 on Oct. 15 after US inflation came in hotter than expected. Euronews put the day's drop at 7.7%; Seoul Economic Daily counts a seventh straight loss and 55 trillion won of chipmaker buybacks now wound down.
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Nvidia's Huang promised $2 billion more in European AI deals and took minority stakes in five UK startups. Fortune says much of it is likely to return as GPU purchases or cloud rentals, so the test is whether funded customers keep buying if AI demand stalls.
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A central bank analysis found 55.2% of AI-firm investment came from other AI firms, a commentary on channelnewsasia.com reports. Nvidia's $30 billion OpenAI stake and up to $105 billion guarantee add to as much as $135 billion tied to its own chip demand.
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Bank of Korea Governor Shin Hyun-song said on Oct 13 that policy stays restrictive until inflation is confidently converging on the 2% target. That makes easing a distant prospect for Korean borrowers and for investors in Korean assets.
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Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal expect the 10-year Treasury yield to ease only to 5.1% by year-end and 4.8% a year later, Semafor reported. Growth and inflation forecasts barely moved, so the case for high yields rests on the supply of capital.
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IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said the AI investment boom could lift growth in advanced Asian economies by up to 1 percentage point. For emerging Asia the range is 0.2 to 0.8 points, a fourfold spread from bottom to top.
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Bloomberg puts Texas data center shell and core at $11.3 million a megawatt, while Meta and BlackRock's $14 billion, 1 GW site works out to $14 million. BloombergNEF says the grid-connection halt Governor Greg Abbott called for could delay 49.8 GW and put up to $15 billion in costs and revenue at risk.
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IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva calls AI investment a positive demand shock, with AI hardware already above 10% of global goods trade. The spending has come alongside inflationary pressure, according to cryptobriefing.com's account of her October remarks.
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America's trade deficit widened 13.7% to $105.6 billion in August, its largest since March 2025. Imports this year still run above 2025's, so the narrower year-to-date gap has come from faster export growth while US buying abroad keeps rising.
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IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva urged governments to stop delaying debt cuts and raise borrowing costs as needed before 191 members meet in Bangkok. Her prescription points companies toward higher rates, while her call to regulate AI stayed at the level of principle.
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Goldman Sachs calls its US data-center outlook through 2027 largely unchanged, yet its figures cut 2027 capacity additions to 26 GW from 36 GW. The bank says local opposition has had limited effect on growth so far, a judgement the November 3 midterms will test.
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Anthropic plans to spend $518 billion, more than 100 times its 2025 revenue, according to the IPO prospectus seen by Reuters. Investors in the listing are underwriting a payoff that JP Morgan says has yet to show up as broad productivity gains in the US.
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Kevin Hassett, the White House's top economic adviser, projected baseline US growth of about 4%, roughly double the 2% private forecasters expect. A company budgeting off official figures is using a forecast that rests on AI gains he says the statistics have not yet picked up.
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US 10-year Treasury yields hit 5.34% on 1 October, the highest since 2002, in a selloff Reuters partly ties to AI and data-centre construction. For teams that borrow to build, AI's own investment is part of why markets expect rates to stay high into 2027.
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Samsung Group is committing $1 billion from six affiliates to Helix, the AI infrastructure firm led by former AWS chief Adam Selipsky. Anyone who later contracts with Helix will deal with a builder whose owners also supply its power and technology.
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New York Fed President John Williams lists AI demand for chips and power equipment among the forces behind inflation he forecasts at 3.5% for 2026. He also said the productivity payoff that would argue for easier policy has yet to show up in the data.
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Columbia's Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh estimates the US AI build at $10.3 trillion through 2032, needing $3.7 trillion a year in revenue to pay off. The bar is 37 times the roughly $100 billion OpenAI and Anthropic book today, a gap the model gives about seven years to close.
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The build is now the largest driver of U.S. private investment growth, and 71% of Americans polled want none of it nearby, which makes entitlement risk rather than capital the thing infrastructure investors have to price.
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Li Feifei said in Hangzhou that Türkiye, Finland and the Netherlands each get an Alibaba Cloud region within 12 months. The Dutch site is due in October. The company already runs facilities in Germany and France.
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Product · August 28, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers