Korea's chip stocks take another hit from a cheaper DeepSeek

DeepSeek's weekend release of V4.1-Flash-1017, which it claims runs faster and cheaper than its predecessor, sent the KOSPI down as much as 3.2% on Monday with SK Hynix falling to 1.68 million won, its lowest level in nearly six months, as reported by Bloomberg. The fear is straightforward: if models need less compute per task, memory makers selling into AI data centres sell less of it. That's after a brutal prior week in which Samsung fell 17.8% and SK Hynix 24.3%, more than double the KOSPI's own 14.5% drop, according to Korean financial press. Chinese competitor CXMT is also pushing into server-grade DRAM, adding a pricing threat on top of the demand question. Nothing here proves AI infrastructure spending is slowing. It proves investors no longer take the growth story on faith.