AI Isn't Just America's Game — What Korea and China Are Winning At

Three countries. That's how Fidelity's Asia-Pacific chairman maps out AI dominance. Each country isn't competing for the same thing — they're winning at completely different layers of the stack.

US = The 'Brain' of AI

Foundation models — GPT, Claude, Gemini — come from the US. These are the core systems that determine how AI reasons and what it knows. For now, the US leads this layer by a wide margin.

Korea = The 'Nervous System' of AI

Running AI models at scale requires massive amounts of fast memory. SK Hynix is the world's top producer of HBM — high bandwidth memory. Samsung is right behind. Korean chips are what make AI physically possible.

China = The 'Muscles' of AI

China's strength isn't in building foundation models — it's in deploying AI at massive scale. With 1.4 billion users, China can roll out AI services faster than anywhere else. Low-cost AI products like DeepSeek add another competitive edge.

What This Means for Korean Investors

As the US AI market grows, demand for Korean semiconductors grows with it. Training bigger AI models requires more HBM and memory. That's supply chain logic — US AI growth flows directly into Korean chip demand.

The Risks Worth Knowing

Big Tech valuations are already high. When expectations are elevated, even a small earnings miss can trigger a sharp correction. China's cheap AI apps also pose a pricing threat to Big Tech's service revenues — a wildcard that could ripple through the whole sector.