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Taiwan Pulls Ahead of South Korea in the AI-Linked Equity Rally

October 6, 2026 at 22:08 EDT

Infra & Chips
Finance

Taiwan has moved ahead of South Korea in the AI-linked equity rally, as investors reward a broader semiconductor supply chain rather than a narrower memory-chip upswing. The TAIEX is up 72% in 2026, ahead of the KOSPI's roughly 65% gain, after beating it by about 23 percentage points in the latest quarter, market data published Wednesday showed.

Oct. 7, 2026 | AI equity markets

Taiwan Takes the AI Lead

The AI trade has lifted both Taiwan and South Korea, but investors are giving Taiwan the edge as the rally moves from memory prices to supply-chain breadth.

TAIEX 2026

72%

Top among tracked global indexes

KOSPI 2026

65%

Second on the leaderboard

Quarter lead

23 pts

TAIEX over KOSPI

Overweight Taiwan

40%

Versus 25% for Korea

The rally, drawn to scale

Each stacked block represents roughly 5 percentage points of 2026 index gain.

72%

TAIEX

65%

KOSPI

Why Taiwan gets the bid

Broader exposure across design, foundry manufacturing, packaging, networking and servers gives investors more ways to ride AI infrastructure spending.

Why caution remains

The debate centers on rich Taiwan valuations, memory-cycle risk in Korea, Chinese competition, tariffs and geopolitics.

What decides the next leg

Breadth

Can Taiwan keep turning AI bottlenecks into earnings upgrades?

Memory

Can HBM demand extend Korea's cycle into 2027?

Risk

Can both markets absorb valuation, policy and supply-chain shocks?

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