Japanese and South Korean stocks rebounded after several steep drops this week, as strong US tech earnings revived enthusiasm for AI spending.
Amazon announced further investment in data centers, while Microsoft delivered “blockbuster” revenue growth in its cloud-computing business. The upbeat results lifted global tech stocks, including major gains for Asian heavyweights.
Returns on AI-linked shares remained lackluster in China, however, despite the country’s big push into the sector — an outcome at least partly explained by the gap between firms’ technical capabilities and their profitability, a prominent economist argued.
“It is hard to see how this might change if the country’s leading AI models remain open weight and the involution problem remains intact,” Alicia García-Herrero wrote for The Wire China.