Asian technology stocks fell Thursday, tracking U.S. peers that pulled back in overnight trading, underscoring the heightened volatility in tech names globally.

In Japan, SoftBank Group dropped 4.36%, while chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron was over 5% lower. Advantest lost 2.14%, and Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia declined 8.84%.

In South Korea, SK Hynix fell 9.71% and Samsung Electronics declined 6.13%. Seoul Semiconductor dropped 4.27%.

Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, was 1.46% lower.

Tech stocks have been seeing heightened volatility in recent sessions, with South Korea’s semiconductor-heavy market whipsawing between steep losses and record gains.

Despite the heightened volatility analysts remain optimistic over the outlook of the tech sector, with J.P. Morgan saying in a Wednesday note that the tech sell-off in Asia had not derailed AI investment cycle.

While investors have sold off stocks on worries over the sustainability of aggressive AI spending, the bank said it does not expect hyperscalers to cut back on investment.

“Stepping away from the share price moves, we do not see any fundamental indicators that signal meaningful weakness in the next 6-12 months,” J.P. Morgan said.

Global growth is being driven by AI and defense spending, S&P Global said in a report dated Aug. 5. “A growing source of momentum is coming from the technology sector.”

The global purchasing managers’ index output of tech equipment increased in July at the fastest rate since May 2021, S&P Global noted. “Alongside rising demand for software and related IT services, technology reported the fastest growth for ten months,” it added.

Asian technology stocks had surged Wednesday, with SoftBank soaring more than 13%.

Asian technology stocks surged Wednesday after a strong Wall Street rally overnight that saw robust corporate earnings and easing oil prices push major U.S. indexes to fresh records.

Shares of SoftBank Group surged more than 10%, while chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron added  3.64%. Advantest jumped 7%, and Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia rose 6.34%.

In South Korea, SK Hynix jumped 6.9%, while Samsung Electronics gained over 4%. Seoul Semiconductor popped 7.6%.

Ortus Advisors’ strategist Andrew Jackson said in a note on Wednesday the latest rally in U.S. semiconductor stocks reinforced the bullish outlook for Asian AI names, pointing to a surge in chipmakers and infrastructure suppliers overnight.

Jackson expects SoftBank to further extend gains after Arm Holdings, its majority-owned chip design subsidiary, jumped overnight on optimism over higher AI-related data center royalties and CPU development plans.

U.S. stocks had a banner day Tuesday, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average scaling fresh record highs, thanks to strong earnings and another decline in oil prices driven by hopes that the Strait of Hormuz could soon reopen.

The Nasdaq Composite popped 2.59% to close at 26,584.99, as Palantir Technologies rallied over 29%. 

Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading ride-hailing and delivery firm, raised its full-year outlook on Tuesday as it reported record second-quarter results, with resilient consumer demand across the region holding up despite macroeconomic headwinds. 

Shares of the Nasdaq-listed company rose 4.86% in extended trading. 

“AI is now embedded in the Grab way of life, whether it’s in our products or the way we work,” Grab CFO Peter Oey told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia“, adding that the technology has helped the company ship products three times faster translating into better margins and a more efficient cost structure. 

The company saw a 28% year-on-year jump in the number of rides in the second quarter, Oey said. “It’s one of the highest that we’ve seen.”

The company’s revenue grew 22% year on year to $997 million and its operating profit came at $19 million for the quarter ended in June, up 186%.

Grab lifted its full-year revenue outlook to $4.10 billion-$4.15 billion from $4.04 billion to $4.10 billion forecast earlier, and raised it’s EBITDA estimates to $720 million-$740 million, from $700 million-$720 million.

“We’re seeing demand continue to be very strong in the business in the month of July itself, and our financial services continue to scale and are at an inflection point today,” Oey said, expressing confidence in the business outlook. 

On Grab’s agreement to buy Delivery Hero’s foodpanda business in Taiwan, Oey said the company was working closely with regulators and has not yet closed the transaction, and hopes to complete it in the second half of this year.

“A lot of the products that the Southeast Asian community has been seeing and using day in and day out, we want to bring to the Taiwan market as well,” he said.

A little over a week after the New York Knicks paraded through lower Manhattan celebrating their historic 2026 Championship win over the San Antonio Spurs, the NBA has set its sights on an ambitious target: Southeast Asia. 

The decision to stage both a Rising Stars Invitational tournament – at which high school teams from across Asia showcase their skills, with top performers invited to future NBA development camps – and an accompanying investor conference in Singapore is no coincidence. 

Southeast Asia has emerged as one of the NBA’s fastest-growing markets for fan engagement, making the region a focal point for both player development and business expansion. 

According to the league, basketball is the most-played sport in the Philippines with participation growing in numerous other countries, while fans in the region have increased by 15% in the span of three years through Q1 2026.

Digital consumption is also on the rise. Video views across NBA Asia’s social media platforms increased 88% year-on-year, according to data supplied by the league to CNBC. The number of followers across the league’s regional social media platforms has almost doubled during the 2025-26 season.

In an interview with CNBC’s JP Ong, the NBA’s vice president for Southeast Asia, Sheila Rasu, underscored the loyalty of the region’s fan base. “Basketball is probably the fastest growing sport in Southeast Asia,” said Rasu. “In Singapore, it’s probably the most played team sport in the country. In Indonesia, there is a huge growing population of kids that are taking up basketball. So we do feel that basketball is truly having a moment, not just with the boys, but also the girls.” 

The league is also renewing its focus on the region through its NBA Launchpad program, which announced a strategic expansion in Asia this week. The program, which was originally launched in 2021, is designed to source and pilot emerging technologies that impact the sport. 

Since the program launched, the NBA has championed everything from a sleep tech start-up to a data analytics company that places a sensor in a basketball’s valve to track speed and acceleration.

Launchpad, said Rasu, “is our way to be involved in shaping the game, and how to improve the fan experience. We identify like-minded young companies that can actually help us improve the game.”

Former NBA champion Jeremy Lin, the first Asian American to win basketball’s top prize, was also watching the action in Singapore. Lin, who played nine seasons for the league, propelled viewership of the sport across Asia as what was dubbed “Linsanity” exploded in…

When Candice Choi launched her Korean seaweed snack brand, Geem, in 2023, she thought the company would be strictly direct-to-consumer, with its marketing strategy relying primarily on TikTok.

But within three months, the seaweed snacks were on the shelves of grocery stores, including some Whole Foods locations, where Geem chips sit next to kale chips and veggie straws.

“There was so much confluence of people being really excited about our snacks and stores really willing to take us on that was really, really exciting,” Choi told CNBC. “Traditionally, buyers are gatekeepers, and it takes years and years and years to develop those relationships, but they saw the category was growing, and we’ve been performing.”

Because of its explosive demand, Geem will be launching in Whole Foods stores across Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii in July, the company told CNBC exclusively.

Geem’s growth is indicative of a larger trend: As demand for global flavors in the U.S. rises, Asian grocery items are getting more of a spotlight in mainstream grocery stores, signaling an evolution beyond the traditional “ethnic aisle” of years past.

Those aisles typically included a limited selection of international products, often offering primarily sauces or oils. Now, grocery stores look much different.

“People are being exposed to newer flavors earlier on, and it’s no longer that weird snack that maybe you try once and you’re like, ‘No,'” Choi said. “It’s really exciting, and we’re seeing that taste profile really influence consumer demand. And you can see it in the numbers. Asian snacking is expected to go to multiple billions in the end of 2030, and that’s just the snacking.”

Research from global investment banking advisor BDA Partners estimates that the “ethnic aisle” generated $8.8 billion in sales in 2024, with Asian products growing nearly four times faster than the overall grocery sales. The U.S. Asian food market is projected to grow to $51.3 billion by 2031, with a 4.7% compounded annual growth rate, BDA said.

According to data from market research firm Circana, sales of Asian grocery items jumped from $1.57 billion in 2021 to over $2.31 billion this year.

That growth is multifaceted, Circana analyst Sally Wyatt told CNBC. The Pew Research Center has reported that the Asian population in the U.S. has more than doubled since 2000, growing to a 7% share of the total population. As that population grows, Wyatt said, so too has its influence, introducing new flavors to the rest of the country.

It’s a trend playing out at restaurants, too, but at a time when eating out is 4.3 times the cost of cooking at home, Wyatt said, the dynamic is most apparent in grocery stores.

“Especially as younger consumers are exploring, as consumers want to travel but maybe can’t, we do see that food and beverage is just a perfect way to get a taste of a culture that you might not be able to do every day,” she…

When music executive Anjula Acharia began launching superstar actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas into Hollywood in the early 2000s, her label partner Jimmy Iovine — the name behind pop sensations such as Eminem and Lady Gaga — told her she was 20 years too early to bring South Asian talent to the U.S.

Now, Acharia is the founder and CEO of 5 Junction, a joint label with Warner Music Group focused specifically on investing in South Asian artists in the U.S.

“That sounded crazy, to think we were 20 years too early, but now, 20 years later, with the explosion of people like Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla … there’s all these South Asian acts that are coming here and really selling out, particularly in the live arena,” Acharia told CNBC.

The South Asian music market in the U.S. has remained largely untapped, but as music becomes more globalized, as with the success of K-pop and Latin acts, South Asian talent is making a case to investors as the next big business opportunity, Acharia said.

Global music revenues are reaching all-time highs, surpassing $30 billion in 2025, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Spotify said last year that streams of Indian artists in international markets grew more than 2,000% between 2019 and 2023, and nearly 50% of royalties from Indian artists on the platform in 2024 were from listeners outside India.

With South Asia’s growing population and diaspora, it’s set to be one of the fastest-growing segments within global music, according to Acharia.

“We’re in a different time, and I think digitally things travel just so much faster,” she said. “A lot of big hits were made with samples from Indian music, so it’s been in the zeitgeist for a long time — it’s just not been given a face.”

As more labels look to the subcontinent, Acharia said the business is currently in a stage of experimentation, figuring out what works and how the fan bases will evolve. Warner Music Group is the third-largest music label in the U.S., holding roughly 17% market share by distribution ownership as of the first quarter of 2026, according to Billboard.

“I think the business proposition is this global Indian fandom,” she said. “How do we galvanize this audience and this fandom, and how do we serve it?”

5 Junction represents top artists such as singer and songwriter Rhea Raj, who told CNBC she’s seeing South Asian music become more mainstream in the U.S.

“We’re seeing more artists at bigger festivals and at award shows, and I think the best of it’s yet to come,” Raj said.

Raj and her sister, Lara Raj, of the girl group Katseye, are two of many South Asian artists in the U.S. building out fan bases that span backgrounds and ethnicities.

Rhea Raj, who got her start on “American Idol” nearly a decade ago, said she believes now is the time that…

The U.S. aims to sustain equilibrium in the Asia-Pacific region and is working toward a situation where its allies are more capable, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said, while also warning China not to disrupt the status quo.

“The bedrock of partnership is alignment on national interests,” Hegseth said in remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday. The U.S. will take a “strong, quiet, clear” approach to alliances, he said.

He praised countries like the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore for stepping up and sharing the burdens of defense and alliances.

Vietnam and India also got call-outs for improving their military readiness.

While Hegseth said the U.S.’s relationship with China is the strongest it’s been in a long time, he also directly called out the country.

Washington seeks “a favorable but durable balance of power in which no state, including China, can impose its hegemony and hold the security or prosperity of our nation and our allies in question,” he said.

Hegseth had some choice words for Europe, complaining that allies in the region hadn’t pulled their weight.

Alliances should happen “without the drama and the moralizing,” he said. “Europe should take note.”

— This is breaking news, please check back for updates.

North Asian markets are outperforming those in the south of the continent, thanks to tougher insulation from energy shocks, stronger fiscal ability and AI developments, according to a senior Goldman Sachs strategist.

North Asian markets have “greater buffer stocks” and can afford to pay a higher price for oil and gas, compared to South Asia, which has “much fewer buffers and doesn’t have the ability fiscally to offset the pass-through of higher energy prices to the economy,” said Tim Moe, Chief Asia Pacific regional equity strategist and co-head of macro research in Asia at Goldman Sachs Research.

Moe described some North Asian markets as seeing a “massive outperformance” compared to South Asia, according to a transcript of Goldman Sachs’ “Exchanges” podcast seen by CNBC.

Meanwhile, “[Markets in] Indonesia, South Asia — no tech and lots of energy vulnerability — is down 25%,” Moe said.

Investors are focusing on AI developments in the north of Asia, particularly in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, where tech-oriented stocks make up around 80%, 60% and 30% of their indexes, respectively, Moe noted. The best-performing markets are South Korea and Taiwan, with South Korea up by more than 80% year-to-date, he added.

But Moe cautioned that Korean semiconductor stocks such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are trading at about five to six times this year’s earnings and about four times next year’s. “That implicitly says that the market really doesn’t believe that that profitability can last for very long,” he noted.

Moe was also optimistic about the Japanese market, citing the country’s measure of political stability following the election of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, “decent” earnings growth and AI robotics.

In China, Moe sees A-shares — traded in yuan on the Chinese mainland and up 10% year-to-date — “meaningfully” outperforming H-shares, mainland stocks traded in Hong Kong. He said he sees a “very clear policy support” for the structural strategic development of China’s equity market.

“This really is a reflection that China’s come out of over three years of deflation measured by the PPI, the producer price index, and that’s gone positive for two consecutive months, the most recent reading being 2.8%, which is above consensus,” Moe added.

China’s H-shares are not doing as well due to weak earnings from heavyweight stocks. “H-shares are more dominated by the internet application area that [is on] the softer end of the spectrum of the AI trade,” Moe said. “And that is something which has been languishing partly because the attention’s been more on upstream hardware,” he added.

Asked for his takeaways on last week’s meeting…

A month into the worst oil supply disruption since the 1970s Arab embargo, the economic pain spreading across Asia is reviving an uncomfortable question: Could this be 1997 all over again? 

The parallels are hard to ignore. Asian currencies are under pressure, fueling the risk of capital outflows. Spiking energy costs have pushed governments to roll out emergency measures, while central banks are drawing down foreign exchange reserves. 

In Thailand, policymakers have moved to ration gasoline. Meanwhile, surging pump prices in the Philippines prompted the government to declare a national emergency. Across the region, the widening trade deficits and rising inflation expectations feel reminiscent of the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997. 

But economists say the similarities may be largely superficial, thanks to more flexible exchange-rate regimes and deeper foreign exchange reserves, which provide a buffer that helps absorb some of the shock. 

“Crises can take many shapes, and the shape of this [Iran] crisis is entirely different,” said David Lubin, a senior research fellow at Chatham House.

The 1997 episode, he noted, was driven by “a toxic mixture of fixed exchange rates, high levels of short-term foreign debt, low levels of foreign exchange reserves, and elevated current account deficits.”

“These days, Asian economies – precisely because of the legacy of the late-1990s crisis – are much better protected.” 

The region’s financial architecture has also “evolved substantially over the past three decades,” with deeper local markets, broader domestic investor bases and far less reliance on short-term foreign funding, said Fesa Wibawa, an investment manager of fixed income at Aberdeen Investments.

That, he said, reduces the risk of sudden capital flight and forced deleveraging that defined the 1997 crisis.