TAIWAN HAS OUTPASSED SOUTH KOREA IN THE AI RACE

Taiwan has outpassed South Korean in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) trade globally. The Taiex Index beat the Kospi Index by about 23 percentage points last quarter, the widest margin since the turn of the century. Earnings upgrades have also outpaced those for its Korean counterparts for the first time since March 2025. Most of the global fund managers are now overweight on Taiwan as compared to Korea. Taiwan now offers investors exposure across chip design and manufacturing, packaging, networking, and servers, meaning it has more ways to benefit as AI spending broadens. On the other hand, Korea’s market leadership remains heavily concentrated on chipmakers like Samsung and SK Hynix, making it more vulnerable to the trade.