Asian stocks rallied on Tuesday after Anthropic filed for an eagerly anticipated initial public offering, reviving enthusiasm for battered AI, tech, and semiconductor shares across the region.
South Korea’s KOSPI rose 3.1%, with chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix jumping by 4.2% and 5.2% respectively. The rally also drew strength from South Korean economic data showing 3.4% year-on-year growth in the third quarter of 2026. Tuesday’s jump interrupted days of heavy selling in South Korea’s equity markets; the KOSPI has dropped by 18.2% in the past month.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 also rose by 1.7%. SoftBank, which is betting on AI for future growth, rose 5.0%. Advantest, which makes semiconductor test equipment, jumped by almost 9%.
Anthropic, the San Francisco-based company behind Claude, filed its S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The filing disclosed $16.3 billion in first-half revenue, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier; it also revealed an operating loss of $693 million, narrower than the $2.1 billion loss from a year ago, and a net loss of $80.7 billion.
The company said that it plans to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “ANT.” Media reports have said the company is targeting a valuation of between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion, which would make the listing one of the largest on record.
A successful Anthropic IPO can restore investor faith in Asia’s chipmakers, which have been hit by fears that Big Tech AI spending is about to slow down.
“If the outlook for Anthropic is convincing with high profitability, more spending on AI infrastructure can translate into more sales and stronger pricing for Japanese and South Korean semiconductor supply chains,” Gary Ng, a senior economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, says.
Elsewhere, Singapore’s Straits Times Index fell 0.1%, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.4%. India’s Nifty 50 rose 0.1%.
China underperforms
Chinese stocks did not get a boost from the Anthropic filing. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell by 0.7%, while mainland China’s CSI 300 fell by 1.3%.
Even tech-related shares performed poorly. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, one of China’s leading chipmakers, fell 1.3%. Unitree, the buzzy robotics maker, dropped by 4.8%, while AI processor designer Cambricon fell by 5.7%.
One exception to the China tech sell-off was Z.ai, the Chinese AI developer behind the GLM family of models, which rose by 8.9%.
“Hong Kong and mainland markets barely budged because they sit outside the main U.S. AI supply chain,” Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, explains. Export controls keep the most advanced chips out of Chinese hands, while users can already turn to cheaper domestic models from the likes of DeepSeek, she adds.