Reports of a delay in Nvidia's Kyber NVL144 rack system triggered a sharp drop in PCB and AI hardware supply chain stocks. Analysts believe the timing of this news is crucial, as investor sentiment is already high after a period of continuous gains in AI stocks. Last week, global tech stocks fluctuated wildly due to news of AI over-construction, potential overcapacity, and intensified competition. Therefore, even a negative signal regarding the supply chain or manufacturing progress can be amplified by the market. Asian PCB and related material suppliers were the most significantly impacted. Japan's Ibiden, a major PCB supplier and Nvidia's largest customer, fell as much as 10%. South Korea's Samsung Electro-Mechanics fell 11%. These declines indicate that the market directly projects the delay in Nvidia's next-generation rack system onto upstream PCB, substrate, and material demand expectations.
However, Gary Tan of Allspring stated that the Kyber rack delay does not necessarily mean a weakening of AI capex; it is more likely simply that Nvidia's most aggressive next-generation system architecture will require a longer deployment time, which is not entirely unexpected. The weakness in related stocks that day was largely due to profit-taking, sector rotation, cautious sentiment ahead of the US market reopening after the July 4th holiday, and potential fund disruptions from SK Hynix's US IPO this week.
The next key point to watch is Samsung Electronics' earnings report due on Tuesday. The market will use Samsung's results to observe whether the memory, AI supply chain, and semiconductor industry outlook can still support current valuations.
