Taiwan’s stock market has trounced that of tech rival South Korea as the two markets compete for artificial intelligence (AI) investment from some of the world’s biggest money managers.

Taiwanese equities have soared 14 per cent this year, with almost two thirds of the advance coming from a rally in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). The market-value gap over South Korea has widened to as much as US$363 billion, the most since at least 2003, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

Taiwan has emerged as the biggest AI beneficiary in Asia with TSMC’s manufacturing of advanced semiconductors dominating the sector. Analysts tout the island’s complete AI supply chain ecosystem from chip designers to foundries to downstream server makers. While South Korea is home to major memory chipmakers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, it has lower exposure to AI overall compared to Taiwan, they say. BLOOMBERG