The Bank of Korea expects the AI-driven chip supercycle to continue, dismissing concerns of a "peak."

A report released by the Bank of Korea on July 13 pointed out that the global semiconductor market is still in a state of supply shortage, and the chip supercycle driven by artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to last for a long time, which refutes market concerns that the chip cycle has peaked.

The central bank's analysis states that the current chip cycle is different from previous ones, primarily driven by competitive investments made by companies to respond to the fundamental changes in the industrial ecosystem brought about by AI. At the same time, due to the current market being dominated by customized products such as high bandwidth memory (HBM), the pace of supply expansion is more constrained than in the past.

Recently, concerns over excessive investment in AI infrastructure and potential oversupply of memory chips have triggered a sell-off in tech stocks, with significant declines in the stock prices of South Korean chip giants such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. In response, the Bank of Korea stated that although there remains uncertainty regarding the speed of AI technology adoption and profit prospects, major investment banks such as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley generally predict that the global semiconductor market will maintain strong momentum at least through next year.