The South Korean government is considering extending the sovereign AI core GPU guarantee project, with a budget of up to 4 trillion won next year.
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South Korea plans to invest 5 trillion won in excess tax revenue from semiconductors to develop "sovereign AI" and purchase 10,000 GPUs to support a single team.
According to Beating's monitoring, the Korea Economic Daily revealed that South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT is in discussions with the Presidential Office and the Ministry of Finance, planning to utilize approximately 5 trillion won in excess tax revenue from the semiconductor industry to purchase about 10,000 of NVIDIA's most advanced Vera Rubin superchip GPU modules this year. This investment will be used to support elite teams developing world-class "sovereign AI" models. This decision stems directly from the sense of crisis caused by US export controls on cutting-edge AI models—Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 have been restricted from external access, forcing South Korean companies to urgently modify systems built on these models. The concept of "national strategic assetization" of AI models has thus become a reality. Currently, although four teams in South Korea—LG AI Research Institute, SK Telecom, Upstage, and Motif Technologies—are advancing independent basic model projects, each team only receives support from 700 to 800 GPUs. This dispersed investment makes it difficult to compete with globally leading models that utilize tens of thousands of GPUs. The government has therefore decided to shift to a "selection and concentration" strategy, allocating 10,000 GPUs to the best teams at once, and plans to include special funds in the supplementary budget for attracting top overseas AI talent. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung publicly stated last month that the GPU procurement pace was too slow and demanded that related funds be ensured when compiling the supplementary budget. The current global competitive window is extremely short, with companies like Anthropic and OpenAI iterating new models weekly. France, with its single-focus strategy, has surpassed Meta to become the seventh largest AI provider globally, thanks to Mistral AI. If South Korea cannot catch up in the short term, it risks becoming an "AI vassal state." The South Korean semiconductor academic community has given this positive feedback, believing that investing the funds gained from hardware prosperity into building software competitiveness is essentially an investment in the country's future. --------------------------------- Click the original link below to join the Beating · Lark AI news channel for 24/7 monitoring of global AI hotspots and news.
Goldman Sachs injects a strong boost into South Korean stocks: another 20% rise in the second half of the year! Market leverage risk is overestimated, and opportunities will spread to six main themes.
According to BlockBeats, on July 6th, Goldman Sachs released its second-half strategy framework for the South Korean stock market, maintaining its 12-month target of 12,000 points for the KOSPI index, representing over 20% upside from current levels. The core support comes from a 320% year-on-year earnings growth forecast and a forward P/E ratio of only 6.65. This indicator is 2.7 standard deviations below its historical average, the lowest since 2009. In the first half of the year, South Korean stocks led Asia with a 92% gain, but this growth was primarily driven by upward revisions to earnings rather than valuation expansion: forward EPS was revised upwards by nearly 200%, while the forward P/E ratio actually compressed slightly. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix contributed nearly 90% of the index's gains, with their combined market capitalization weight rising to 56% and their earnings weight reaching 72%. Goldman Sachs believes this concentration reflects earnings more accurately than a bubble, but market breadth has fallen to its lowest level since the pandemic, and continued gains in the second half of the year will likely lead to increased volatility. Regarding retail investor concerns, Goldman Sachs points out that leverage levels are overvalued. The growth in leveraged ETF size is primarily driven by asset appreciation rather than new leveraged funds. The margin loan-to-deposit ratio is actually declining, indicating that retail investors still hold substantial cash reserves and their asset allocation remains heavily focused on real estate. Goldman Sachs believes that opportunities in the Korean stock market in the second half of the year will expand from memory chips to six main themes: the industrial sector (accelerated defense orders, unmet demand for VLCC replacements), robotics and physical AI (Korea's auto parts ecosystem is expected to become a core supplier of humanoid robots), batteries and power infrastructure (driven by data center energy storage demand), beneficiaries of corporate governance reforms (multiple regulations implemented since July, with over 70% of listed companies having a PBR below 1), reflation trading (semiconductor profit spillover effects driving upward revisions to GDP and extending the interest rate hike cycle), and the semiconductor capital expenditure supply chain (the government plans to invest 800 trillion won in three major projects). Goldman Sachs also warns of three risks: seasonal weakness in the third quarter, technical correction pressure from a significant deviation of the index from the moving average, and amplified volatility due to hedging operations by leveraged ETF market makers. The combination of earnings growth and low valuations makes South Korea the market with the lowest PEG ratio in Asia, and the current valuation misalignment provides significant room for stock selection in the second half of the year.
The South Korean government denies plans to establish a think tank to "share" huge profits from chip manufacturers.
BlockBeats reported on July 1st that, according to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy issued a statement today formally denying rumors circulating online that the government plans to establish a new think tank to capitalize on the enormous profits of chip manufacturers. The statement said, "The rumors circulating online that Seoul has sent letters to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix regarding the proposed establishment of a government-led profit-sharing think tank are completely false. We will take strict measures against those who maliciously spread such misleading information and refer them to investigative authorities." This rumor comes against the backdrop of rising domestic debate over how to utilize the resulting additional tax revenue to support long-term growth, as the AI boom has driven record profits for South Korean chip manufacturers. Last month, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, in an interview with The Economist, proposed a universal basic income subsidy, stating that "a portion of the excess profits could be distributed to the general public," referring to the recent debate over how to share the chip manufacturers' exorbitant profits. The presidential office subsequently explained that the remarks were not directed at any specific company, but rather referred to the challenges South Korea must ultimately face in its AI transformation. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, as the dominant players in the global HBM (High-Bandwidth Memory) market, have seen their profits soar during this AI supercycle, and the social distribution of their enormous capital returns is increasingly coming into the policy discussion arena. According to Bitget market data, the South Korean KOSPI index closed down 2.04%, SK Hynix fell 3.4%, and Samsung Electronics fell 5.84%.
South Korea is considering using semiconductor tax revenue to establish a growth fund.
A senior South Korean government official reportedly stated that South Korea is considering establishing an investment fund to capitalize on the excess tax revenue generated by its booming semiconductor industry, in order to support long-term economic growth. (Jiemian)
South Korean beauty and retail stocks led the market gains, and Gate.com continues to expand its investment portfolio in South Korean stocks.
According to ChainCatcher, Gate's market data shows that the South Korean stock market was active today. Manyo Factory, a cosmetics stock, reached $11.60, up 18.43%; Heung Koo Petroleum reached $6.88, up 14.72%; and IT'S HANBUL reached $7.25, up 13.51%, with several popular South Korean stocks leading the market gains. Gate has established a 24/7 trading service system covering the three core markets of US, Hong Kong, and South Korea, supporting over 10,000 US stocks and ETFs, over 1,500 Hong Kong stocks, and over 1,000 South Korean stocks, totaling over 12,500 stocks and ETFs globally. Users can participate in global stock investment through their Gate unified account using USDT, supporting fractional share transactions starting from as low as 0.01 shares, and enjoying stock dividend rights. The platform also supports cross-brokerage transfers for US and Hong Kong stocks, as well as corporate actions such as stock splits and consolidations, further optimizing the stock investment service experience.
South Korean stocks plunge 20%, nearing a bear market; the AI boom faces the awkward situation of "the more disastrous the earnings, the steeper the decline."
According to BlockBeats, on Wednesday afternoon, July 8th, South Korean stocks extended their losses as investors reassessed the outlook for AI demand. The KOSPI index fell by more than 6% at one point, breaking below 7200 points, and has cumulatively fallen by more than 20% from its all-time high last month, poised to enter technical bear market territory. Memory chip maker SK Hynix fell by as much as 5%, and Samsung Electronics fell by 6.9%. The Korea Exchange initiated a temporary trading halt on the KOSPI index, suspending algorithmic trading. South Korean stocks were among the strongest performing markets globally this year, but their performance is highly dependent on SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, amplifying volatility when sector sentiment weakens. Even with Samsung Electronics announcing a 19-fold surge in quarterly profits earlier this week, chip stocks continued to be under pressure. Jordan Klein, a TMT sector expert at Mizuho Securities, stated that investors overreacted to Samsung's preliminary second-quarter results. He believes this sell-off in semiconductor stocks is more a sign of waning momentum than a deterioration in fundamentals. Klein stated that excluding one-off bonus expenses, Samsung's operating profit actually significantly exceeded expectations, with its storage business implied operating margin potentially exceeding 80%. He indicated that Samsung's single-quarter operating profit has already surpassed the total of the past three years, and reacting to Samsung's stock price based solely on preliminary results is "extremely short-sighted." Meanwhile, an AI trading rotation occurred in Asian markets. Hong Kong-listed Chinese stocks rose, with the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index rising as much as 3.4%, the Hang Seng Tech Index rising over 5% intraday, Alibaba rising over 8%, and Tencent rising over 3%. Market analysts believe that funds are flowing from crowded trades focused on AI infrastructure to markets with lower valuations and more value-oriented characteristics. Reuters' report on DeepSeek's self-developed chip and The Information's report on Zhipu AI considering designing its own AI chip further fueled this rotation. (Jinshi)