On Wednesday, the South Korean stock market was hit with a circuit breaker. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) closed sharply lower, shedding 5.98%. Memory giant SK Hynix saw its shares plummet by 9.61%. From memory chips to large language models, stocks in related sectors across multiple countries have recently been volatile. What are the underlying reasons for this, and what shifts are occurring in the global industrial landscape?

The immediate trigger for SK Hynix's further share price decline is not complicated: its earnings report. On that day, SK Hynix released its second-quarter results, posting an operating profit of 60.5 trillion Korean won. While this figure set a new quarterly record, it fell short of the market's expectation of 64.2 trillion won. This "good, but not good enough" report card was met with another sharp sell-off in the stock.

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is rewriting the pricing logic of the memory industry

Beneath this obvious surface narrative, a more significant undercurrent is worth noting: the rising star in the memory field, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT). On the same day South Korea's memory giants suffered heavy losses, CXMT, which had only been listed for three trading days, saw its stock price rise by 12.7%. While single-day movements can be coincidental, the industrial signal behind this is noteworthy: it is rewriting the pricing logic of the memory industry. The DRAM market has been dominated by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron for decades, with prices largely controlled by these three giants. However, CXMT has now become the world's fourth-largest player by shipment volume. With this listing, it has raised over 50 billion yuan for capacity expansion. In the past, pricing memory stocks required only a glance at the Big Three's performance. Now, a new variable called "Chinese supply" has been added to the pricing equation.

Chinese tech companies are frequently becoming a variable in global capital markets

Why was a record-breaking earnings report met with such amplified punishment by the market? Because the frame of reference is changing, and expectations are shifting. The change is not solely about CXMT. Recently, Chinese tech companies are frequently becoming a variable in global capital markets. On July 16th, Kimi K3, a large language model with 2.8 trillion parameters, was officially released. The following Monday, all its model weights were made public, available for free to global developers. During this period, stocks like Nvidia and the PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index experienced varying degrees of decline. There are many reasons for this: tensions in the Middle East pushing up oil prices, questions over "circular financing" related to a $750 billion Nvidia transaction, and the sector having been weakening for several consecutive weeks. However, Kimi K3 is an undeniable factor in this context. As some market commentary notes, DeepSeek questioned the cost, while Kimi K3 questions the price. The former proved that training a top-tier model doesn't necessarily require massive amounts of GPUs, shaking the narrative of "burning money to pile on compute." The latter goes a step further by making near-frontier capabilities freely available. When high-quality models can be obtained at zero cost, the return expectations for high-priced subscriptions from US AI companies and their tens of trillions of dollars in capital expenditure are simultaneously put up for reassessment. The market is beginning to debate how long the pricing power of US AI companies can last.

From memory chips to large language models, the recent turbulence in stock markets across multiple countries actually reflects the loosening grip of old industrial structures and the emergence of new forces. For China's technology industry, what matters more than the market's short-term fluctuations is to focus intently on seizing the window of opportunity—deepening technological expertise, solidifying production capacity, and enriching the ecosystem. The strength cultivated from within is the most enduring source of confidence.