Global semiconductor shares slide as China's DUV progress, AI credit risk and central-bank fears weigh

ChainThink said global semiconductor-related trading came under pressure on July 28, led by declines in U.S. chip stocks. NVIDIA finished down about 5%, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 2.23%. Selling spread across Asia as AI hardware names in South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong extended losses. South Korea's KOSPI dropped more than 10% intraday and triggered circuit breakers twice. SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics sank, and the 2x leveraged long ETFs tied to both names slid more than 20%. Multiple catalysts drove the move. The Information reported that a China state-backed company has begun mass production of its self-developed immersion DUV lithography tools, targeting roughly five units in 2026 and scaling to about 20 units in 2027. ASML fell 5.80% on Monday. SanDisk dropped 11.02% and Western Digital declined 4.21%. In China's memory space, ChangXin Memory Technologies surged 466% on its first trading day, sharpening investor focus on the faster push toward self-sufficiency. Credit-risk concerns around NVIDIA's AI infrastructure partnerships also increased. Bloomberg reported NVIDIA is discussing providing up to $250 billion in guarantees to help OpenAI lease computing power from U.S. data-center projects. NVIDIA also said its cooperation with SK Group exceeds $500 billion. ICE Data Services data showed NVIDIA's 5-year CDS widened by about 14 basis points at one point to roughly 82 basis points per year, marking the largest intraday jump since the contract began actively trading. At the model layer, Moonshot's Kimi K3 opened its model weights on July 27, renewing attention on how low-cost, high-performance open-source models could affect AI capex efficiency. Investors are also looking ahead to rate decisions this week from the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan. Expectations of a more hawkish tilt have added pressure to richly valued technology and semiconductor stocks.