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

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 2%, 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.