Taiwan's stock market lost 1,165.28 points, or 2.63%, on Thursday to close at 43,091.87, as uncertainty over Nvidia's leadership spilled into the Asian companies that make, package and assemble its chips. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) fell 2.30%, chip packager ASE Technology dropped 5.02% and MediaTek lost 3.51%, according to Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA).

Huang resigned from all his posts at Nvidia later on Thursday, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. Taiwan's selling came earlier, after Nvidia's shares fell 8.6% in after-hours trading on reports that its board was meeting to discuss his position, according to the AP. For investors in Asia, the question is less about one man than about orders: Nvidia buys the advanced chips, high-bandwidth memory and AI servers that have lifted profits at suppliers from Hsinchu to Icheon.

Taiex gives back most of Wednesday's surge

Thursday's drop erased most of a sharp rebound. The index had climbed about 4,555 points since the stabilization fund announced intervention, and on Wednesday it jumped 1,545.23 points, or 3.62%, to 44,257.15, CNA reported. TSMC climbed 4.81% to NT$2,395 that day after posting record October sales, up almost 60% from a year earlier, and raising its quarterly cash dividend to NT$9 a share from NT$7.

A day later, TSMC reversed early gains to finish at NT$2,340. Because the foundry makes up more than 40% of the market's value, its fall alone accounted for about 440 points of the index's decline, CNA said. Turnover reached NT$1.01 trillion (US$30.82 billion), and the index swung between 42,943.50 and 44,525.24. It had traded above the previous close for most of the morning before losses deepened in the afternoon.

Equity analyst Tsai Ming-han told CNA that an overnight slide of about 8% in Nvidia's shares left many investors expecting weakness in other AI stocks once U.S. trading opened. He said large-cap electronics names drove the decline while money moved into telecom and food stocks. Tsai also said the National Financial Stabilization Fund, whose committee approved market intervention last week, may have stepped in to limit the fall. Foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$684.50 million of shares on the main board, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

Hon Hai Precision Industry, the iPhone assembler that also builds AI servers, slipped just 0.83% to NT$240 ahead of its results. After the close, the company known as Foxconn reported record third-quarter net profit of NT$77.52 billion (US$2.35 billion), up 34% from a year earlier, on sales of NT$3.02 trillion, up 46%. Cloud and networking products made up 54% of revenue, up from 51% in the second quarter.

Chairman Young Liu said at the investor conference that AI demand should stay strong and keep outpacing supply. He expects AI rack shipments to grow at a high double-digit rate in the fourth quarter and the pace to continue into 2027, CNA reported. Liu said supplies of wafers, memory chips and other components should stay tight this year. The Taiex had come into the week rebounding from a slide that included heavy foreign selling of TSMC in October.

SK Hynix falls, Samsung holds up

In Seoul, the Kospi fell 32.63 points, or 0.61%, to 5,342.73, ending a two-day rally that included a 4.39% gain on Tuesday and a 2.6% rise on Wednesday, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. The index had opened higher and reached 5,458.84 in the morning.

SK Hynix, the main supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for Nvidia's processors, fell 1.8% to 1.25 million won. Chip equipment maker Hanmi Semiconductor lost 1.14%, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics sank 4.01%. Samsung Electronics went the other way, rising 0.97% to 208,000 won. The sharpest drop came at Naver, the internet company in which Nvidia is the third-largest shareholder: it fell 6.43%. Lee Kyoung-min of Daishin Securities said the scandal around Huang weighed on the market and some investors also took profits after the rally. Foreigners were still net buyers of 370.4 billion won of Korean stocks.

Elsewhere, Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 0.7% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.3%, according to the Associated Press.

Analysts point to long-term contracts

Korean analysts argued the real exposure sits in orders beyond contracts already signed. SK Hynix's business report for the first half showed one customer accounted for 13.35% of revenue, about 17.6 trillion won; Korean media have identified the customer as Nvidia, though SK Hynix has not confirmed it, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. Daishin Securities estimates SK Hynix will supply 55% of Nvidia's HBM4 this year, Samsung 28% and Micron 17%.

Kim Young-gun, a semiconductor analyst at Mirae Asset Securities, wrote that SK Hynix has more HBM exposure to Nvidia than Samsung does. He said Nvidia's competitive position would be largely unchanged by Huang's departure. The bigger risk, in his view, would be tighter U.S. export controls if authorities found that confidential information had reached China. Even then, he said, a reshuffle among AI chip suppliers would not mean lower AI demand, since custom chips also use HBM.

The memory makers have also locked in buyers. SK Hynix said in its third-quarter call that its DRAM and HBM capacity through 2029 was effectively sold out, with long-term agreements now signed with 14 major customers, as it reported record quarterly profit. Samsung said its HBM capacity for 2027 is fully booked. Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, told the AP that "there is no credible way to put a precise revenue loss" on Huang's departure.

Nvidia's board appointed Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO, and investors in Asia will watch her first comments on demand for clues about orders.