SK Hynix shares plunge 10% amid Asia tech rout as Fed rate hike fears, AI funding worries mount

BREAKING: SK Hynix shares plunge over 10% and Samsung falls 7% as a sell-off in global tech hardware stocks deepens, with Fed rate hike fears and AI funding worries fuelling an Asia-wide rout.

SK Hynix just lost ten percent of its value in a single session.

Wall Street's inflation shock crossed the Pacific overnight, and Asia's chipmakers took the full hit. Samsung fell seven percent, LG Innotek eight, and in Tokyo SoftBank tumbled nearly eight as well, dragging Advantest and Tokyo Electron down with it.

The worry is simple. Building AI infrastructure costs staggering money, and with Treasury yields above five percent, that money just got expensive. The bosses of Broadcom and Intel warned on Monday that financing could be a bigger threat to the AI boom than chip shortages or electricity. When the people selling the chips start worrying about how you'll pay for them, it's worth listening.

Analyst Dan Ives calls it a financing question, not a demand question, and says buy the dip. Maybe. But this entire trade was priced for cheap money, and cheap money just left the building.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.