Asian shares are mixed as investors assess impact of Nvidia's fallout on global AI development

Detailed summary

Asian shares were mixed Friday as investors assess what Jensen Huang’s resignation as Nvidia CEO means for the global artificial intelligence industry. futures edged higher…

HONG KONG (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Friday as investors assess what Jensen Huang's resignation as Nvidia CEO means for the global artificial intelligence industry.

U.S. futures edged higher despite earlier losses on Wall Street, which saw Nvidia falling more than 4% after Huang's exit from the company.

Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.8% to 61,283.16. Shares of chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron were up 1.5%, while memory maker Kioxia Holdings dropped 2.5% and OpenAI investor SoftBank Group lost 5.2%.

South Korea's benchmark Kospi index declined 0.5% to 5,317.05. Samsung Electronics, one of South Korea's most valuable companies, was down 0.7%. Memory chipmaker SK Hynix fell 2%.

Taiwan's Taiex was up 1.7%, with its leading chipmaker TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., adding 0.9%.

With the resignation of Jensen Huang, who co-founded the company and had been a key architect of Nvidia's AI strategy and the broader global AI boom, new questions are being raised as to how his departure could impact the development of the technology. Huang himself had been acting as the face of Nvidia and was deemed by some in the industry as bigger than Nvidia.

The announcement of his resignation came Thursday after his affair raised U.S. national security concerns, with Nvidia's longtime chief financial officer Colette Kress stepping in as interim CEO.

Many AI hardware stocks across Asia have been highly dependent on the speed of AI infrastructure development in the U.S.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was down 0.9% to 23,786.48. The Shanghai Composite index edged up 0.2% to 3,663.71.

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