SEOUL—Na Se-bin has lost all sense of the value of money.
Since January, she has poured nearly all her life savings, roughly $47,000, into the stock market, lured by a global AI boom enriching tech powerhouses in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
Riding wild market swings, the 24-year-old South Korean software developer said she has won and lost the equivalent of a month’s salary in the span of a second. Despite the risk, she can’t resist—not after seeing some of her holdings double in price. Over the past 18 months, South Korea has been the world’s top-performing stock market, and Na and her co-workers joke they should sell their underwear to buy more shares.
“Even friends who have never touched stocks are getting into it,” Na said. “Everyone’s doing something.”
Trillions of dollars are flowing into AI’s global build-out, which relies on semiconductors and chip-making technology from a handful of Asian exporters. The worldwide surge in chip demand is swelling exports, corporate profits and the bank accounts of many investors, seemingly without end.
Even after recent pullbacks, Taiwan’s main stock market has doubled in value over the past year. South Korea’s has tripled. Japan’s Nikkei has surged more than 80% over the same period—triple the returns of the S&P 500.
Accelerating demand for AI-related goods has spurred investors—in Taipei, taxi drivers trade stocks mid-ride—and boosted salaries. A surefire pickup line is saying you work at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chip maker and a generous local employer. Workers in the memory-chip division at South Korea’s Samsung Electronics expect bonuses this year averaging around $400,000. The company is projected to deliver bigger profits in 2026 than any global firm except Nvidia.
This part of the tech world looks to prosper whether or not OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic and SpaceX can deliver on promises to monetize AI services. Asia’s titans supply indispensable hardware, the figurative picks and shovels of the AI gold rush.
Silicon Valley’s four hyperscalers—Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Alphabet’s Google—together plan to spend as much as $670 billion this year on AI-related capital expenditures. That level of spending towers over the inflation-adjusted outlays for the U.S. railroad expansion of the 1850s, as well as the decadeslong construction of America’s interstate highway system initiated a century later.
Global exports of AI-enabling goods hit nearly $4 trillion last year, with Asia accounting for two-thirds of that total, according to an Allianz Trade report. Those goods included semiconductors, data-storage servers and cooling systems.
Direct spending on AI—covering services, infrastructure and software—is forecast to total $2.6 trillion this year, up 47% over 2025, according to Gartner, a market researcher. Next year, it is expected to reach about $3.5 trillion.
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of premier U.S. chip-designer Nvidia, recently concluded a high-profile, 18-day visit filled with events, speaking engagements and business meetings in Taiwan and South Korea.
In Taipei, where convenience stores sell lottery tickets that can win as many as 500 shares of Nvidia stock, Huang announced plans to spend $150 billion a year in Taiwan, which he called the epicenter of the AI revolution. In South Korea, Huang signed deals with local firms in robotics, memory chips and AI.
While Huang was in Seoul, South Korea’s main stock index halted trading on June 8 after cratering more than 8%. The drop followed a U.S. selloff in chip shares, including Nvidia. Huang, in his usual leather jacket even in sweltering Seoul heat, shrugged off the fall.
“Everyone should be very happy about the stock prices,” he said, “because you can buy the stock more cheaply.”
Na, who began trading stocks only this year, estimated that more than 80% of people in her social circle are actively investing, as well as all of her co-workers. One colleague, flush from stock returns, spent tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding ring, she said.
Na has splurged on concert tickets, fancy clothes and dinners for her parents. She had planned to buy her mother a gold ring to mark her parents’ 30th wedding anniversary, but her mother declined.
“She told me to just give her the cash,” Na said, to buy stock.
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Yeh Lun-hao, a 37-year-old insurance agent, invests more than half of his roughly $2,100 monthly salary in local AI- and chip-related companies. His holdings have quadrupled in value, and he recently bought a four-bedroom apartment in Taichung, Taiwan, for roughly $440,000.
For years, his friends stayed out of market investments. Now, they ask his advice about where to put their money.
“None of this would have happened if it weren’t for semiconductors,” Yeh said. “Investing allowed me to shift from pure survival mode to enjoying the beauty this world has to offer.”
TSMC drove much of Taiwan’s market surge. Last year, the company accounted for more than 90% of the revenue for the most advanced chipmaking, according to Counterpoint Research, a tech-market researcher. TSMC is the globe’s seventh-most valuable company, with a market capitalization of more than $2.2 trillion—bigger than Tesla or Meta.
The company’s shares have more than doubled in the past year, powering Taiwan’s combined stock indexes past comparable markets in France, U.K. and India.
The chip maker accounts for more than 41% of Taiwan’s main stock market. By comparison, the Magnificent Seven—Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla—together make up roughly a third of the S&P 500.
Starting wages for an engineer at TSMC can be triple the pay of comparable jobs elsewhere. Some executives poached by the company from smaller firms were enticed by raises of as much as 30%, said Choc Chiang, co-founder of Taipei-based recruitment platform WeFer.
Wang Tsann-lung, the owner of an upscale liquor store in Zhubei, Taiwan, had filled many orders from TSMC. He said he once sold a Napa Valley whiskey to company founder Morris Chang. Now, his store is too small to keep up with company demand. “We’re looking up to them,” he said, “with a heart full of awe and respect.”
Kevin Wang Wei-wen earned an engineering degree in Taiwan and part of his classwork was visiting one of TSMC’s factories, where salaries start at roughly $62,000 a year. That kind of pay is unheard of, he said. “Every household is talking about TSMC.”
He now attends graduate school at the University of Michigan, and TSMC recruiters are calling. Wang is wary of the company’s grueling hours, yet he sees the perks that extend beyond the robust salaries. Being a TSMC engineer confers a social status that appeals to Taiwanese parents who closely screen their daughters’ suitors.
“Your opening line can literally be that you work at TSMC,” Wang said.
TSMC-branded products sell at a premium in a flourishing secondary market. A rice cooker, bearing the company’s corporate colors and circuit-board logo, fetches roughly $312 on e-commerce sites, more than four times the price paid by TSMC employees.
Buyers snap up TSMC luggage, tumblers and shoes. Even the red holiday envelopes given to TSMC workers are sold online—their contents removed—for nearly $15 each.
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South Korea’s market is led by twin chip giants, Samsung and SK Hynix, which dominate the production of two leading types of memory chips for AI computations and data storage.
The two companies, which both recently hit trillion-dollar valuations, account for more than half of South Korea’s Kospi composite index. Kospi was the world’s top-performing index last year, and it leads global rankings this year, too.
Choi Sung-ho, a 35-year-old elementary teacher, is one beneficiary. His Korean stock portfolio has grown roughly fivefold over the past year to more than $300,000. That includes bets on leveraged exchange-traded funds tracking semiconductor stocks. He has upgraded his mobile devices and looks to spend six figures on his next car, he said, either a Mercedes-Benz S-class or a Tesla Model X.
“Even children at my school have mentioned their parents being happy about their stock returns,” Choi said.
More than 180,000 trading accounts for children 18 or younger were created in the first three months of the year at Toss Securities, a South Korean brokerage. The accounts require parent approval to open and allow children to trade on their own. A recent promotion offered to deposit $14 into new accounts opened by high-school students.
On YouTube, the “ETF-explaining Bro” channel is among an emerging group of “finfluencers” dispensing market advice. It has drawn more than 127,000 followers since its launch last July, said Park Soo-in, who owns the channel. “Many people seem to expect the rally will continue,” she said.
Stock gains are boosting an already robust luxury-goods market. The Cartier shop inside one major Seoul department store got so mobbed by shoppers that some items from its “D’Amour” jewelry collection can now be bought only online.
Lim Chae-hoon, the sales head of a BMW dealership in Seoul, said his customers frequently mention their stock windfalls. “There are certainly more people with more money now,” he said.
In Japan, Toyota Motor saw its 22-year run as the country’s highest-valued company end this month, supplanted by SoftBank Group, which bet big on OpenAI and data centers.
SoftBank’s reign didn’t last long. Last Friday, Kioxia, a little-known memory-chip maker, took the No. 1 spot. A year ago, a Kioxia share sold for around $14. Now, it sells for around $600. Kioxia’s success set off a hunt by investors for the next company to hit it big.
Even Japan’s luxury toilet maker Toto has scored in the AI boom. Its high-tech ceramics are used to hold silicon wafers motionless while they are etched with circuitry. The company’s stock has more than doubled.
Another company, Ajinomoto, uses byproducts from its world-famous umami seasoning to create insulating film for AI chips. Its shares are up 50%.
Ryoki Nao, 21, is a standout semiconductor engineering student at a university in Kumamoto, Japan: He is surrounded by classmates who invest, but he doesn’t. Nao keeps watch on the markets but plans to first graduate and secure a job before investing.
“I want to wait until I’m able to earn a decent amount of money,” he said.
Write to Jiyoung Sohn at jiyoung.sohn@wsj.com, Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com and Junko Fukutome at junko.fukutome@wsj.com