Asian chip stocks fall after Nvidia’s sell-off on Wall Street overnight

Asian semiconductor stocks and related stocks were lower on Wednesday morning after a sharp drop in Nvidia’s US share price overnight.

In the US, a chip maker Nvidia fell more than 9 percent in regular trading, sending semiconductor stocks lower amid a selloff on Wall Street. Economic data released on Tuesday reignited jitters about the health of the US economy. Shares of Nvidia continued to slide in after-market trading on Tuesday, falling 2% after Bloomberg reported that the company had received a subpoena from the Justice Department as part of an antitrust investigation.

Nvidia’s value chain extends to South Korea, namely memory chipmaker SK Hynix and conglomerate Samsung Electronics.

Samsung shares fell 2.6 percent, while SK Hynix fell more than 6 percent, dragging the broader Kospi down 2.5 percent. Small-cap Kosdaq fell 3 percent. SK Hynix provides Nvidia with high-bandwidth memory chips that are used in AI chipsets.

Other direct suppliers of Nvidia ca Tokyo Electron fell 7%, while the semiconductor test equipment supplier Advantest fell more than 8%.

Japanese investment holding company SoftBank Groupwho holds a participation as a designer Armdecreased by 6%.

Contract chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company decreased by 4.3%. TSMC makes Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units, which power large language models – machine learning programs that can recognize and generate text.

from Taiwan Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — lost 5%. It has a strategic partnership with Nvidia.

In the United States on Tuesday, Nvidia wiped out $279 billion in market capitalization.

—CNBC’s Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.