Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong all in the red: Asia stocks slide as investors fret about life after Jensen Huang

Detailed summary

Asian stocks fell Thursday as investors kept a nervous eye on Nvidia whose influential boss Jensen Huang faces a probe into an affair with a woman accused ...

HONG KONG, Nov 12 — Asian stocks fell Thursday as investors kept a nervous eye on Nvidia whose influential boss Jensen Huang faces a probe into an affair with a woman accused of spying for China.

Companies linked to the artificial intelligence sector have enjoyed a healthy bounce in recent days after last week’s selloff sparked by regulatory concerns following the Democratic sweep of Congress.

The upcoming IPO of Anthropic and positive earnings from the likes of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and data centre operator CoreWeave – which soothed worries about its financial health – have reinforced optimism.

Chipmakers SK hynix, Samsung, Kioxia and TSMC have led the surge in Asia, even amid rising expectations for a series of US interest rate hikes.

All three main indexes on Wall Street ended on another strong note Wednesday.

Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, Sydney, Singapore, Mumbai, Bangkok and Manila all dropped, though there were gains in Jakarta and Wellington.

Traders’ nerves are being tested by the crisis at Nvidia, with co-founder and CEO Huang facing the boot after he admitted a relationship with Alice Huang, a senior executive at Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed.

US intelligence reportedly circulated a memo in spring alleging Alice Huang was an asset of China’s Ministry of State Security.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Huang was also involved in a second extramarital affair, with the company’s vice president of health care, Kimberly Powell.

Opening of the article, excerpted from Malay Mail. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.