Ahead of OpenAI, Anthropic IPOs, AI Investing Splits by Model Ecosystem

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summarization service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items by reader type.

1. Targeting OpenAI, Anthropic IPOs: U.S. Investors Bet on Model Ecosystems

- Key summary: As IPOs by OpenAI and Anthropic come into view, AI investing is fragmenting into model ecosystem units. This month, U.S. asset manager Harbor Capital unveiled five AI lab ecosystem exchange-traded funds (ETFs) centered on OpenAI (OAIW), Anthropic (ANTW), SpaceX and xAI (XAIW), Meta (MTAW) and Google DeepMind (DEPW). The ANTW fund holds Alphabet and Amazon, which have invested in Anthropic, along with AI data-center company TeraWulf, giving capital and strategic partners a 31.3% weighting. Meanwhile, SK hynix (000660.KS) was included in four of the five products, making its name a common holding cutting across major AI models.

2. Despite Large Shareholder Returns, Short Selling Concentrates on Samsung Electronics

- Key summary: On the 24th, when Samsung Electronics began its share buyback, short-selling turnover reached 1.0175 trillion won, a share of 8.81% — 3.3 times this year's daily average of 2.70%. The absence of any cancellation announcement beyond a buyback intended for performance bonuses drew assessments that disappointment with dividend-focused shareholder returns had surfaced. SK hynix, which had won praise for a 40 trillion won ($29 billion) buyback and cancellation plan, also saw its short-selling share run at about 1.5 times its annual average of 2.41% over the four trading days after its buyback began. Margin loan balances also rose more than 5 trillion won, from 27.4038 trillion won on the 4th to 32.6282 trillion won on the 24th, flashing a warning light on leverage indicators as well.

3. Far From Quadrupling, Below Offering Price: Weaker Sentiment in a Corrective Market

- Key summary: The 10 newly listed stocks in the third quarter posted an average first-day return of -4.62%, plunging from 132.4% for the eight companies in the second quarter. After the KOSPI and KOSDAQ fell 20.45% and 9.72% respectively since last month, the short-term money that had flowed into IPO shares during the second-quarter rally exited newly listed stocks first. Skylabs, a maker of ring-shaped blood pressure monitors, set its offering price at 10,000 won — about 20% below the bottom of its target band — becoming the first company to complete a new listing below its band bottom this year. The market views the fourth quarter, which hinges on the November introduction of the cornerstone investor and preliminary demand forecasting system and on whether large IPOs return, as a turning point for a change in mood.

4. Export-Driven Cosmetics Stocks Emerge as New Growth Plays

- Key summary: This month, while Samsung Electronics and SK hynix fell 2.1% and 2.5% respectively, Kolmar Korea (161890.KS) jumped 57.5% and Cosmax (192820.KS) rose 55.1%. Cosmax topped 500 billion won in quarterly revenue for the first time, and Kolmar Korea became the first in the domestic original development and manufacturing (ODM) industry to surpass 100 billion won in quarterly operating profit. Cosmetics exports in the first half of this year reached $7 billion (about 9.7083 trillion won), up 27.3% from a year earlier for a record high, and Korea rose to become the world's second-largest cosmetics exporter after France. Demand to invest in the industry as a whole has also grown, with the SOL Cosmetics TOP3 Plus ETF rising 34.63% over the past month to rank first among all ETF returns.

5. SK Innovation (096770.KS) Falls Over 3% in After-Hours Trading on SKIET Merger Announcement

- Key summary: SK Innovation decided at a board meeting after market close on the 25th to absorb its separator subsidiary SK IE Technology (361610.KS) (SKIET), and its shares traded at 125,700 won in after-hours trading, down 3.38% from the regular-session closing price of 130,100 won. The merger ratio between SK Innovation and SKIET is 1 to 0.1174540, with SK Innovation as the surviving company and SKIET to be dissolved after the merger. SKIET posted a 290 billion won operating loss in 2024 amid slowing electric-vehicle demand and intensifying price competition with Chinese firms, followed by losses of 246 billion won in 2025 and 136 billion won in the first half of this year. The market is read as having reacted first to the assumption of financial burden rather than to medium- and long-term business efficiency gains, and the merger is expected to be completed on January 1 next year.

6. With HBM4 Expansion and Grok3 Mass Production, Samsung's Nvidia Moment

- Key summary: On the 24th, local time, Nvidia announced at the Hot Chips 2026 semiconductor conference that mass production had begun for Grok3, an AI inference accelerator called a language processing unit (LPX). Grok3 is produced on the 4-nanometer process of Samsung Electronics' S5 line at its Pyeongtaek campus, and a yield improvement of roughly two to three times from April, rising above 80%, is cited as the backdrop for formalizing mass production. Samsung Electronics is also increasing its supply of sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) used in the next-generation graphics processing unit (GPU) Rubin, and the industry expects this year's HBM supply to grow 20% from last year on a gigabyte (GB) basis. Meanwhile, global investment bank KeyBanc raised its Rubin GPU shipment forecast by 9%, from 1.75 million to about 1.9 million units annually.