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Nvidia $279 billion wipeout — the biggest in U.S. history — drags down global chip stocks

Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, displays the new Blackwell GPU chip during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2024.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
  • Global semiconductor and associated stocks fell on Wednesday, following a steep plunge in Nvidia's share price in the U.S. overnight.
  • On Tuesday, around $279 billion of value was wiped off of Nvidia. That was the biggest one-day market capitalization drop for a U.S. stock in history.
  • Nvidia shares continued sliding in post-market trading Tuesday, falling 1.5%, after Bloomberg reported that the company received a subpoena from the Department of Justice as part of an antitrust investigation.
People walk past the logo of Samsung Electronics in Seoul on July 7, 2022. South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd turned in its best April-June profit since 2018 on Thursday, underpinned by strong sales of memory chips to server customers even as demand from inflation-hit smartphone makers cools.
Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images
People walk past the logo of Samsung Electronics in Seoul on July 7, 2022. South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd turned in its best April-June profit since 2018 on Thursday, underpinned by strong sales of memory chips to server customers even as demand from inflation-hit smartphone makers cools.

Global semiconductor and associated stocks fell on Wednesday, following a steep plunge in Nvidia's share price in the U.S. overnight.

In the U.S., chipmaker Nvidia plunged more than 9% in regular trading, leading semiconductor stocks lower amid a sell-off on Wall Street. Economic data published Tuesday resurfaced jitters about the health of the U.S. economy. Nvidia shares continued sliding in post-market trading Tuesday, falling 1.5%, after Bloomberg reported that the company received a subpoena from the Department of Justice as part of an antitrust investigation.

Around $279 billion of value was wiped off of Nvidia on Tuesday, in the biggest one-day market capitalization drop for a U.S. stock in history. The previous record was held by Facebook-parent Meta, which suffered a $232 billion fall in value in a day in February 2022.

Nvidia's value chain extends to South Korea, namely, memory chip maker SK Hynix and conglomerate Samsung Electronics.

Samsung shares closed 3.45% lower, while SK Hynix, which provides high bandwidth memory chips to Nvidia, slid 8%.

Tokyo Electron dropped 8.5%, while semiconductor testing equipment supplier Advantest shed nearly 8%.

Japanese investment holding company SoftBank Group, which owns a stake in chip designer Arm, fell 7.7%.

Contract chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company declined more than 5%. TSMC manufactures Nvidia's high-performance graphics processing units which power large language models — machine learning programs that can recognize and generate text.

Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — lost nearly 3%. It has a strategic partnership with Nvidia.

The selling in Asia filtered through to European semiconductor stocks. Shares of ASML, which makes critical equipment to manufacture advanced chips, fell 5% in early trade. Other European names such as ASMI, Be Semiconductor and Infineon, were all lower.

—CNBC's Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.

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