Goldman Sachs: South Korean AI stocks have plunged too sharply, their fundamental logic remains intact.

Goldman Sachs has not shifted its stance on Korea’s AI chain amid the recent sharp sell-off. In its latest view, the sell-off of Korea’s AI-related stocks has gone too far. The bank continues to maintain an overweight position on the Korean stock market, and regards the memory cycle as the core support for this rally. Goldman Sachs notes that this round of decline largely reflects position and leverage unwinding, with fundamental logic remaining intact. The bank’s core rationale remains the sustained demand pull from AI computing power for DRAM, HBM, and NAND. Goldman Sachs argues that AI servers, cloud providers’ capital expenditure, and demand for high-bandwidth memory are creating longer-term supply-demand tightness, and the market has not fully priced in the scenario where memory chip shortages could persist until 2030. Because memory manufacturers have high operating leverage, their earnings elasticity will expand rapidly once prices stay strong. This explains why Goldman Sachs remains bullish on the Korean market after the sharp sell-off. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together account for roughly half of the KOSPI’s weight, meaning the Korean stock market has essentially become a high-beta expression of the global AI hardware cycle. For U.S. stock investors, this logic also spills over to Micron, SanDisk, Western Digital, and the semiconductor equipment chain. AI stocks have seen heightened volatility recently, but as long as cloud providers’ capital expenditure does not slow significantly, memory remains the most directly benefiting segment of AI infrastructure.