(Reuters) – The technology sector is climbing in Europe in the wake of Wall Street the day before and Asian scholarships earlier Thursday, carried by optimism concerning the demand for semiconductors after Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix concluded agreements to provide memory chips to Openai data centers, the Chatgpt creator.
Around 8:12 am, the STOXX 600 technological segment takes 2.17%, while ASML Asmi, Soitec, Besi and Stmicroelectronics increased from 2.5%to 6.5%.
Semiconductor manufacturers react to the announcement on Wednesday that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix had signed letters of intent with OpenAI, which seeks to meet the growing demand for its Stargate project, a joint venture with SoftBank and the American giant of Oracle software aimed at developing artificial intelligence centers in the United States.
Stargate, presented last January by American president Donald Trump as an initiative in the private sector, plans to invest up to $ 500 billion in the construction of infrastructure for AI to allow Washington to get ahead of China and other rivals in the world race for this technology.
The partnership between the two South Korean manufacturers of electronic chips and the American start-up reinforces in particular the expectations according to which the global development of AI will generate a strong demand for semiconductors, which is logically welcomed by investors in the technological field.
Optimism as for the prospects of the sector was first felt in Wall Street on Wednesday, then in Asian markets, especially in South Korea, where the Kospi index closed on Thursday on a gain of 2.7%.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix increased by 3.49% and 9.8% Thursday.
“We feared that the prices of the HBM fleas (High Bandwidth Memory) will decrease next year due to the intensification of competition, but these concerns will be easily dissipated thanks to this strategic partnership,” wrote Jeff Kim, analyst at KBC Securities in a note, anticipating a strong increase in demand for Stargate.
“Stargate being a key project led by President Trump, it is also possible that this partnership has a positive impact on trade negotiations between South Korea and the United States,” he added.
OPENAI also reached a valuation of $ 500 billion (426.26 billion euros) following an agreement in which current and former employees sold for around $ 6.6 billion in shares, Reuters learned from a source close to the file on Thursday.
(Written by Diana Mandiá, with Youn Ah Moon and Jihoon Lee, edited by Augustin Turpin)
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