Hong Kong (AFP) – The shares of technology giants plummeted this Friday in the Asian stock markets, as happened the day before on Wall Street, due to the prospect of greater regulation of artificial intelligence with the victory of the Democrats in the United States elections.
First modification: 06/11/2026 - 10:31
The main victims were semiconductor and microchip companies, essential for data centers where AI models are trained and developed.
In South Korea, Samsung Electronics fell nearly 10% this Friday, while SK hynix fell more than 11%. The Seoul Stock Exchange, the Kospi, closed with a drop of 6%.
Same scenario in Japan, where Tokyo Electron's stock fell around 9% and Kioxia's fell 13%.
The day before in New York, the Nasdaq index, which brings together technology stocks, fell 5.52%, its biggest drop since April 2025, when President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on the entire planet.
"What we are seeing today is a total collapse of technology stocks, to a level that we could call capitulation," summarizes Neil Wilson, analyst at Saxo Markets.
The market analyzes the victory of the Democrats in the midterm elections in the United States as a coming brake on the development of AI.
Many of the Democratic officials elected in Tuesday's elections campaigned to slow the construction of data centers in their constituencies.
Residents of dozens of cities in the United States also adopted restrictions or bans on data centers on Tuesday.
The corrective is especially disturbing, especially when the massive investments of the technological giants in AI and data centers have lately been one of the main vectors of growth in both the stock market and the North American GDP.
"Reinforced opposition"
Traders point out that leftist Senator Bernie Sanders' call for a moratorium on the construction of data centers also contributed to the panic.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this turn could disrupt the stock market IPO plans of Anthropic, one of the AI mastodons.
Dario Amodei's company planned to launch the week of November 16, but it could be valued at less than $1.5 billion, its goal at this time, or even postpone the IPO.
Michael Hewson, an analyst at MCH Market Insights, points to investors' fear of "reinforced opposition to AI development plans. The results in Texas raise fears that the state's policymakers will target Elon Musk's Tesla and SpaceX for their support of Trump."
The day before in New York, Broadcom fell 10.15% and Micron 17.17%.
Nvidia, which boasts the second largest market capitalization in the world, plummeted 8.91%, representing a loss of about $400 billion.
On Thursday, the so-called Magnificent Seven - the nickname given to American technology heavyweights such as Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft - lost $800 billion, the equivalent of Sweden's GDP, in one session.
In Europe, this Thursday, Infineon lost 8.63% in Frankfurt, ASML 6.55% in Amsterdam and STMicroelectronics 9.33% in Paris.
"There's blood in the streets, folks," Saxo Markets' Neil Wilson said by way of metaphor.
For his part, Donald Trump blamed the Democrats for this wave of panic in the stock markets. "It's sad to see, but they only have themselves to blame," he said in a message on Truth Social, addressed to his rivals.
© 2026 AFP
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