South Korea’s blistering stock-market rally has just produced the world’s latest $1 trillion company.<\/p>\n
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On Tuesday, Samsung Electronics<\/a> surged as much as 13%, pushing its market valuation pas $1 trillion as the South Korean chip giant rides the artificial-intelligence boom.<\/p>\n Samsung Electronics’ stock has more than doubled this year in a stunning rally that makes it only the second Asian company \u2014 after Taiwanese chip titan TSMC \u2014 to join the $1 trillion club.<\/p>\n The broader South Korean market also rallied sharply, buoyed by gains in Samsung and rival SK Hynix, whose shares jumped 10% on Tuesday. SK Hynix stock has also more than doubled this year.<\/p>\n The surge sent South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index<\/a> soaring as much as 6%, smashing through the 7,000 level. Investors are piling into AI-linked stocks amid improving global risk sentiment, after President Donald Trump expressed optimism about a potential deal over the war in Iran.<\/p>\n The Kospi is up about 70% this year, making it the best-performing major stock market globally in 2026. By comparison, the S&P 500 has gained about 6% this year, while the Nasdaq Composite is up 9%.<\/p>\n The explosive gains \u2014 the Kospi<\/a> has tripled since the start of 2025 \u2014 mark a dramatic reversal for a market long weighed down by the so-called “Korea discount.”<\/a><\/p>\n Seoul has spent years trying to reverse that reputation through market reforms aimed at improving corporate governance and boosting shareholder returns.<\/p>\n Those efforts have coincided with a global AI spending frenzy that has drawn billions of dollars into Korean equities from both domestic retail traders and foreign investors.<\/p>\n “The AI infrastructure cycle is increasingly dominant, with 80% of the growth concentrated in semiconductor exporters, particularly from South Korea,” equity strategists at Swiss private bank Lombard Odier wrote on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Supply bottlenecks for such chips are supporting pricing power, they added.<\/p>\n Samsung Electronics has emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of that boom, reporting a 750% surge in first-quarter operating profit to a record high.<\/p>\n Samsung Electronics now joins a small group of companies valued at more than $1 trillion, including Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Saudi Aramco.<\/p>\n Still, South Korea’s market has been volatile amid geopolitical uncertainty this year, even as the AI-driven rally powers ahead.<\/p>\n Samsung Electronics is also facing the risk of union strikes later this month over bonus disputes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korea’s blistering stock-market rally has just produced the world’s latest $1 trillion company. Loading audio narration… On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[3628,4166,3802,4165,3777,335,938,4164,127,276,33,956,4167,4163,207,4162],"class_list":{"0":"post-4840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-samsung-electronics","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence-boom","10":"tag-company","11":"tag-gain","12":"tag-investor","13":"tag-kospi","14":"tag-market","15":"tag-rival-sk-hynix","16":"tag-samsung","17":"tag-samsung-electronics","18":"tag-south-korea","19":"tag-stock","20":"tag-t-club","21":"tag-tuesday","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}