▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items by reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Expanding U.S. Sanctions: The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has added third countries doing business with Iran to its sanctions list while simultaneously playing the tariff card against China and Canada. Still, analysts note that the sanctions will struggle to gain traction without cooperation from China, the largest buyer of Iranian crude oil, and some see the move as an attempt to work around a Supreme Court ruling that found the reciprocal tariffs unconstitutional. The conflict with Canada is expected to weigh on U.S. automakers that have invested in an integrated North American supply chain.
■ Semiconductor Landscape: While Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) is expanding its presence in the ecosystem around Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin platform through its two pillars of foundry (contract chip manufacturing) and memory, China is accelerating its drive for self-reliance. Goldman Sachs projected that China's supply of advanced-process wafers will far outpace demand growth, narrowing the supply gap sharply within a decade. Lithography equipment, however, is assessed as remaining the biggest weakness of China's ecosystem.
■ Expanding Export Stocks: Funds worn out by semiconductor volatility are moving into sectors where export growth is confirmed in the numbers, such as cosmetics and games. Cosmetics posted their largest-ever export figure in the first half as their export markets diversified from China to the United States and Europe, while the five major game companies saw their average share of overseas revenue top 70% for the first time on the back of PC and console expansion and acquisitions of Western studios. The market places weight on the possibility that these sectors will establish themselves as new market leaders beyond a simple sector rotation.
[News of Interest to Global Investors]
- Key summary: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on the 24th local time the launch of Operation Economic Outcast, vowing to block every option available to the Iranian regime. The United States will impose sanctions on third countries doing business with Iran in the areas of digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping, and designated more than 60 new sanctions targets, including individuals, entities and vessels that supported nuclear and missile technology, cyber operations and crude oil revenue. Along with this, the U.S. government is considering an additional 7.5% tariff citing China's overproduction, which would raise the tariff rate on China to 20% when combined with the existing 12.5% tariff under Section 301 of trade law. President Trump declared he would raise tariffs on Canadian automobiles, trucks, parts and steel to 50% starting January 1, 2027. The Wall Street Journal noted that with Canada's annual auto and parts exports to the U.S. at $50 billion, a 50% tariff amounts to imposing $25 billion in taxes on U.S. industry and consumers.
2. Grok3 Enters Mass Production Amid HBM4 Expansion — Samsung's 'Nvidia Moment'
- Key summary: Samsung Electronics' foundry division has begun mass production of Grok3, Nvidia's AI inference accelerator language processing unit (LPX). Nvidia formalized the start of mass production at the Hot Chips 2026 semiconductor conference on the 24th local time. Grok3 is produced on the 4-nanometer process at the S5 line of the Pyeongtaek campus, and its yield is understood to have improved two- to threefold from April to more than 80%. The memory division is increasing supply of sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) mounted on the next-generation graphics processing unit (GPU) Rubin, and KeyBanc raised its forecast for Rubin GPU shipments by 9%, from 1.75 million units annually to about 1.9 million. The industry explains that the partnership between Samsung and Nvidia is moving beyond the supply of individual components toward a total solution for AI hardware.
3. Goldman: China's Advanced Chip Supply Gap to Shrink Sharply Within a Decade
- Key summary: In a report on the 24th, Goldman Sachs projected that China's supply of advanced-process wafers at 7 nanometers and below will grow at an average annual rate of 46% from last year through 2035, far exceeding the forecast for demand growth of 17% a year over the same period. As a result, the supply-demand gap for advanced-process chips within China is projected to narrow from 92% last year to 34% in 2035. The aggressive capacity expansion and yield improvement at the largest foundry company, SMIC, are cited as the backdrop for the supply expansion, and China's semiconductor capital investment is estimated to reach $82 billion by 2030. Still, due to lithography equipment restrictions, Chinese companies such as CXMT are assessed to lag Samsung Electronics and SK hynix (000660.KS) by two to three technology generations.
[Reference News for Global Investors]
4. Targeting IPO-Bound OpenAI and Anthropic — U.S. Invests in the 'Model Ecosystem'
- Key summary: As initial public offerings by OpenAI and Anthropic come into view, AI investment is being subdivided into ecosystems by model. U.S. asset manager Harbor Capital this month launched five AI lab ecosystem exchange-traded funds (ETFs) centered respectively on OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and xAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind. ANTW, the Anthropic-related product, has a 31.3% weighting in capital and strategic partners such as Alphabet, Amazon and AI data center company TeraWulf. Anthropic and OpenAI entered the IPO process in June by filing confidential registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Meanwhile, SK hynix was included in four of the five ETFs, appearing as a common stock cutting across the major AI models.
5. Cosmetics Stocks Riding Export Boom Emerge as New Growth Stocks
- 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 ever, while Kolmar Korea became the first in the domestic original development manufacturing (ODM) industry to surpass 100 billion won in quarterly operating profit. Domestic cosmetics exports in the first half of this year reached $7 billion, up 27.3% from a year earlier for a record high, and Korea rose to become the world's second-largest exporter after France. In addition, as demand grows to invest in an entire industry rather than individual stocks, SOL Cosmetics TOP3 Plus rose 34.63% over the past month, taking the top spot in returns among all ETFs.
- Key summary: The average share of overseas revenue at five companies — Nexon, Krafton (259960.KS), Netmarble (251270.KS), NCSoft and Pearl Abyss (263750.KS) — topped 70% for the first time in the first half of this year. Their overseas sales for the first half came to 6.057 trillion won, up nearly 60% from 3.7981 trillion won a year earlier, reaching 80% of last year's full-year overseas sales of 7.9593 trillion won in just half a year. Nexon improved its Western results on the hit of Arc Raiders in North America and Europe, NCSoft on the consolidation of the European casual game platform JustPlay, and Pearl Abyss topped a 90% overseas share as Crimson Desert surpassed 6 million cumulative units sold. Domestic game industry revenue, by contrast, fell to a growth rate in the 1% range at 24.1243 trillion won last year, cited as a factor spurring the shift to global markets.
▶ Read the article: Government to Invest in KEPCO, Laying Groundwork for AI Infrastructure
▶ Read the article: SK hynix Union Rejects 'Treasury Stock Bonus,' Enters Renegotiation
▶ Read the article: IPO Sentiment Weakens, and Now — Offering Price Falls Below Band for First Time This Year
