Seoul gained 6.6% on a memory maker that pays its shareholders

The Kospi, Seoul’s benchmark index, jumped 6.6% on Wednesday, Bloomberg reports, led by a 10% rise in SK Hynix after the memory-chip maker said it would return about $45 billion more to shareholders as its profit rose sevenfold¹. Samsung Electronics gained 9.5% and Kioxia 16%¹. Al Jazeera puts SK Hynix’s third-quarter operating profit at 83.33 trillion won, about $62.8 billion, up about 630% on the year². The broader MSCI Asia Pacific index added 1.4%¹.

A different kind of AI news. Much of this week’s enthusiasm rests on plans. Anthropic filed to list on the Nasdaq, reporting a net loss of $80.7 billion in the first half of 2026 on $16.3 billion of revenue². Meta’s upsized $25 billion share sale drew demand for about five times the shares on offer, people familiar with the offering told Bloomberg, as the company seeks $98 billion for its AI spending¹. SK Hynix is the other kind: a supplier that has already been paid and is handing cash back. Desk arithmetic: Anthropic’s half-year loss is about five times its revenue; SK Hynix’s quarter is a profit.

Wall Street set the tone. On Tuesday the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.18%, the S&P 500 0.6% and the Dow 0.03%². AMD gained 5.45%, Broadcom 4% and Intel 3.61%². Nasdaq 100 futures added 0.4% in Asian hours¹.

The test comes tonight. Microsoft and Alphabet report on Wednesday, Amazon on Thursday and Apple on Monday². Investors want to see whether the hundreds of billions poured into AI infrastructure pay off². Gartner forecasts global AI investment at $2.7 trillion this year and $3.6 trillion in 2027². A forecast of spending is not a forecast of returns. The invoices that SK Hynix has already collected are the closest thing to a return the boom has printed so far.

Not everything rose: Euro Stoxx 50 futures were down 0.2%¹. Nothing here is investment advice.