Asian tech stocks surged Monday, as investors cheer news that Iran and the U.S. have reached a deal to end the Middle East conflict.

Japanese tech investor SoftBank was the best performer among major tech stocks in Asia, rising over 12%. Tokyo Electron and Advantest added 9.19% and 7.69% respectively.

Memory chip behemoths and heavyweights on South Korea’s Kospi Index, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix gained 4.65% and 6.42%, respectively.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, or TSMC rose 2.16%, while Hon Hai Precision, also known as Foxconn, added 2.5%.

Softbank, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have seen huge overall gains in recent weeks. Last month, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each crossed $1 trillion market valuation, while SoftBank recently became the most valuable company in Japan.

The moves follow a risk-on sentiment amid expectations that the Middle East conflict could end soon, as the U.S. and Iran have reached a peace deal.

According to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday, both Iran and the U.S. have agreed to a deal, with both sides declaring immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts. The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, June 19, in Switzerland, he said. Pakistan has served as a mediator between the two countries.

“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz without a toll system and the U.S. will also end the naval blockade of Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump said In a Truth Social post. “Ships of the World, start your engines,” Trump said. Let the oil flow!”

The broader tech space has done fairly well, according to Ecaterina Bigos, BNP Paribas Asset Management’s chief investment officer of core investments Asia ex Japan.

“Because again, not to forget that investors are trying to rebalance some parts of the portfolios, but they still want to stay in that race of AI,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday.

Broader Asia markets were also higher Monday, amid signs of the end of the Middle East conflict.

Tech stocks in Asia and Europe extended their sell-off Monday, as investors soured on global AI-linked plays after the U.S. tech-heavy Nasdaq declined more than 4.5% last week.

Memory chip behemoths and heavyweights on South Korea’s Kospi Index, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, ended Monday’s trading session down 10.18% and 7.68%, respectively. The Kospi plunged as much as 8%, as the two companies make up over 40% of the index.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, or TSMC, was down 2.96%, while Hon Hai Precision, also known as Foxconn, fell 5.27%.

Japanese tech investor Softbank Group plunged 6.1%, while Tokyo Electron and Advantest were down 7.45% and 5.72%, respectively.

European chip stocks followed Asian peers lower, with ASML, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, ASM International and Besi each falling between 3 and 4.5% in early trading.

The slump has been exacerbated by a risk-off sentiment amid expectations that interest rates in the U.S. could stay higher for longer, following last week’s U.S. labor data that sharply beat estimates.

“We are pushing the final two rate cuts in our Fed forecast back to June and December of 2027. The labor market has been stronger than we anticipated,” Goldman Sachs said in a note on Friday.

The share price declines follow a recent rally in Asia tech stocks that was supported by investor optimism on AI demand. Last month, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each crossed $1 trillion market valuation, while SoftBank recently became the most valuable company in Japan.

The sell-off in tech names was triggered after Broadcom’s revenue for fiscal second quarter missed market estimates last week, plunging its shares and causing a cascading impact on the tech sector.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) lost over 9% Friday; Softbank’s British chip firm Arm Holdings had dropped nearly 13%, while Micron Technology declined more than 13%.

“The tech-led rout erased approximately $1.8 trillion in S&P 500 market cap,” according to a UOB note on Monday.

UOB, however, said that tech and software companies will remain in focus with “the debut of a space exploration/AI/tech company on the Nasdaq on Fri (12 Jun), in what may be the largest IPO ever.”

Broader Asia markets were also lower Monday, after a fresh escalation in the Iran war signals that the conflict is far from over.

CNBC’s Mike Sheen contributed to this report.

Shares of SoftBank Group fell more than 11% following an overnight sell-off in the U.S. market on the back of wider profit taking in the tech sector. Other Asian tech giants, including TSMC and Foxconn, also saw their share prices fall.

While the Japanese investment giant recently overtook Toyota Motor as Japan’s most valuable company, there are market concerns over SoftBank’s high-risk bets on AI, even as its share price has risen about 70% year-to-date on investor enthusiasm over the new technology.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC he expects the AI revolution to be 50 times larger than the dot-com revolution of the 2000s.

“Now, if you look at the history, electronics and motorization crashed in 1929, but went up for many, many years, for the next 100 years after that … so there may be some correction, but that will be the best investment opportunity to me,” Son said on Monday.

The market appears “to become fixated on short-term momentum, and less interested, or unable, to map out the long-term trajectory with detailed assumptions,” according to a recent investor note by Deutsche Bank analyst Peter Milliken.

Over in South Korea, Samsung and SK Hynix saw their shares decline by 1.25% and 2.75% respectively amid some profit taking, after both companies each crossed a market valuation of $1 trillion in May.

Taiwan’s TSMC was down 1.65% while Foxconn fell more than 4%.

Overnight in the U.S., chip major Nvidia fell 3.62%, while Alphabet lost 0.79%. Amazon lost 2.5%.

On Wednesday, SoftBank sold a 3.25% stake of Indian eyewear maker Lenskart via its affiliate ​SVF II Lightbulb (Cayman), offloading 56.5 million ⁠shares at 508.55 Indian rupees ​each ($5.32). This sets the transaction value at around 28.73 ​billion rupees.

SoftBank’s shares last traded 11.3% lower at 7,377 yen.

—CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan and Sawdah Bhaimiya contributed to the report.

Shares in Japanese tech-focused investment giant SoftBank Group soared 16.5% Thursday, amid a broader tech-fueled rally that saw Japan’s Nikkei 225 surge to record highs.

Japanese markets reopened after an extended holiday and investors rushed to catch up with a global artificial intelligence-fueled rally, sending Japanese tech names higher.

While SoftBank is on course to record its best day since 2020, if gains hold, chip-testing equipment maker Advantest rose nearly 7.8%, while semiconductor equipment supplier Tokyo Electron surged 9.2%. Chip solutions provider Renesas Electronics jumped 13.8%.

The rally came after Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite hit another record overnight, with U.S. artificial intelligence-linked stocks surging. Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. rose 18.6%, Arm Holdings advanced 13% and server maker Super Micro Computer Inc. soared 24.5%.

“Japan was shut for the back end of Golden Week while global risk assets ripped, so today’s move is the Nikkei pricing in three sessions in one,” said Global X ETFs’ investment strategist Billy Leung.

“SPX hit a fresh record and Nasdaq made another all-time high while Tokyo was closed, led by semis and AI names,” Leung said, adding that Advantest and Tokyo Electron are “the most liquid Japanese expressions of that AI semi trade.”

He added that easing geopolitical concerns also helped sentiment, with oil prices falling on signs of de-escalation between the U.S. and Iran.

SoftBank’s gains were amplified by its close ties to Arm and artificial intelligence firm OpenAI. “SoftBank is effectively the listed proxy for OpenAI and Arm,” Leung said.

The move also reflected growing investor optimism around data center infrastructure demand tied to AI inference and agentic AI systems.

Rolf Bulk, head of semiconductor and infrastructure at The Futurum Group, said the rally reflects growing optimism around the long-term demand outlook for AI infrastructure.

“I think it’s partly a continuation rally on the back of the strong AI-related share performance in the U.S. yesterday, as well as a reaction to AMD’s quarterly report, which has strong read-across for Arm,” Bulk said.

“CPUs are important for AI inference workloads; they handle for instance agent sandboxes, orchestration servers, database and API layers. With inference and agentic AI demand increasing, datacenter CPUs have become one of the key bottlenecks in the AI infrastructure build-out.”

Bulk pointed to AMD’s latest forecast that the total addressable market for datacenter CPUs could reach $120 billion by 2030, growing more than 35% annually.

Shares of companies tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure fell Tuesday after a report that OpenAI has fallen short of internal growth expectations, raising fresh questions about whether the pace of spending across the sector is sustainable.

Oracle, which has a $300 billion, five-year partnership to supply computing power to OpenAI for AI operations, dropped 4%.

Chipmakers including Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices declined 4% and 3%, respectively. Shares of Nvidia fell more than 1%.

Qualcomm dipped 0.2% Tuesday but closed off its lows. The stock had gotten a slight boost Monday on reports it is working with OpenAI on smartphone chips tied to the firm’s hardware ambitions. Leveraged neocloud stock CoreWeave dropped more than 5%.

In Asia, SoftBank Group, one of OpenAI’s largest investors, sank about 10%.

The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI has recently missed its own projections for user growth and revenue. The shortfall has sparked internal concern about whether the company can keep pace with the massive financial commitments required to build out data centers and secure long-term computing capacity.

According to the report, finance chief Sarah Friar has warned colleagues that if revenue growth doesn’t accelerate, the company could face difficulty funding future compute agreements.

OpenAI pushed back on the report. “This is ridiculous. We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day,” the company told CNBC.

Oracle defended OpenAI’s growth trajectory, saying it’s seeing firsthand how quickly adoption of OpenAI’s technology is accelerating.

“We’re incredibly excited about our partnership with OpenAI and remain focused on building and delivering the capacity they need to support rapidly growing demand,” an Oracle spokesperson said. “OpenAI’s new 5.5 model is a significant step forward, and we expect continued momentum as access to their technology expands across cloud providers.”

Open AI, which kickstarted the AI boom with the launch of its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, recently closed a record-breaking $122 billion funding round at a post-money valuation of $852 billion.

“You would assume any slowing was known by the investors, right? If not, shame on OAI,” Jordan Klein, TMT sector specialist at Mizuho, said in a note. “How new could update be as the round closed end March when the quarter would have ended. And it’s not even May 1. I highly doubt OAI fundamentals slowed that fast in under 30 days.”

Meanwhile, competition in enterprise AI is intensifying. Anthropic has been gaining traction with corporate customers, while Google’s Gemini models are also picking up momentum as companies increasingly adopt multiple providers.

Still, some investors questioned whether the report materially changes the broader AI spending outlook.

“I view the article as largely a rehash of what we already knew: OpenAI’s growth seems to have slowed in late-2025 into early-2026 as the business ceded some share to Anthropic and Gemini,” said John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds. “There is nothing here that suggests this is an issue for the pace of spending across the sector as a whole; instead, this looks more like confirmation about OpenAI’s recent market share trends.”

Others emphasized how difficult it is to apply traditional metrics to the current AI cycle. Luke Rahbari, CEO of Equity Armor Investments, said shortfalls in revenue targets should be viewed with caution, given how imprecise forecasting remains in a rapidly evolving industry.

“OpenAI missing its revenue targets is, in the grand scheme, a distraction,” said Rahbari. “In the current AI landscape, these projections are largely arbitrary. No major player in this race can accurately forecast their revenue or capital expenditure within a 25% to 50% margin of error.”

— CNBC’s Kate Rooney and Seema Mody contributed reporting.

Shares of Sakura Internet surged as much as 20.2% Friday after Microsoft said it has begun discussions with the Japanese cloud company and SoftBank to develop artificial intelligence infrastructure in Japan.

Microsoft said it plans to invest $10 billion in Japan between 2026 and 2029 to build AI infrastructure, strengthen cybersecurity and train 1 million engineers and developers by 2030.

Sakura Internet, which provides internet infrastructure services using domestic data centers, and Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp. will partner with Microsoft to provide AI computing resources, including graphics processing units located in Japan.

The announcement came during a visit to Japan by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, who met Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

Smith said the investment comes as demand for cloud and AI services grows in Japan. Around one in five working-age people in the country use generative AI tools, compared with the global average of about one in six, according to Microsoft’s AI Diffusion Report.

The partnership will allow data to be processed in Japan and support the development of advanced AI systems such as domestic large language models, Microsoft said in a statement.

SoftBank and Microsoft Japan are also discussing a joint solution that would allow Microsoft Azure customers to use SoftBank’s AI computing platform.

Shares of Softbank Group were up 0.22% in Friday trade, while SoftBank Corp. rose 1.02%

Separately, Microsoft will partner with five other major Japanese IT companies, including NTT Data Corp., NEC, Fujitsu and Hitachi, to train 1 million AI professionals by 2030.

Asian chip stocks rallied in early trading Thursday after American AI chip darling Nvidia posted strong third quarter earnings, in a sign that AI bubble concerns aren’t slowing down the AI industry.

South Korea’s SK Hynix pared gains to rise nearly 2%. The memory chip maker is Nvidia’s top supplier of high-bandwidth memory used in AI applications. 

Samsung Electronics, which also supplies Nvidia with memory, was up more than 5%. The company has been working to catch up to SK Hynix in high-bandwidth memory to land more contracts with Nvidia. 

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, which produces most of Nvidia’s chip designs, rose over 4% in Taipei. Hon Hai Precision Industry — also known as Foxconn, and manufacturer of server racks designed for AI workloads — climbed 3.28%.

The Asian chip giants’ rally comes after Nvidia’s earnings topped Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, with the company providing a stronger-than-expected sales guidance for the fourth quarter.

Nvidia’s sales and outlook are closely watched by the technology industry as a sign of the health of the AI boom, and its earnings come against the backdrop of recent market fears regarding an AI bubble.

However, the company’s strong results and forecasts should ease immediate AI bubble concerns, Rolf Bulk, equity research analyst at New Street Research, told CNBC.

“Demand is diversified, with AI-native companies deploying agentic AI solutions, and enterprises increasingly integrating AI across their existing products and services,” Bulk said.

“We expect Nvidia’s results to drive higher earnings estimates across the sector, including for its primary GPU supplier TSMC, memory vendors SK Hynix and Samsung, and the broader Asian subcomponent and assembly value chain,” he added.

In Tokyo, Renesas Electronics, a key Nvidia supplier, pared gains to rise 1.51%. Tokyo Electron, which provides essential chipmaking equipment to foundries that manufacture Nvidia’s chips, gained 5.67%. Another Japanese chip equipment maker, Lasertec, was up more than 6%. 

Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank skyrocketed nearly 7% at the open and was last trading 2.66%, though the firm recently offloaded its shares of Nvidia. Softbank owns the majority of British semiconductor company Arm, which supplies Nvidia with chip architecture and designs.

SoftBank is also involved in a number of AI ventures that use Nvidia’s technology, including the $500 billion Stargate project for data centers in the U.S.

“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told investors on an earnings call. “From our vantage point, we see something very different.”

— CNBC’s Nur Hikmah Md Ali contributed to this story.

Shares of Japan’s SoftBank Group resumed their slide on Friday, following a broader slump in AI-related stocks as investors once again grew wary of the sector’s lofty valuations.

The group, which holds a wide range of AI investments across infrastructure, semiconductor, and application companies, saw shares drop more than 8%.

This comes after SoftBank gained nearly 3% in the previous session, having plunged 10% on Wednesday to clock its worst day since April. It stares at about $53 billion market cap wipeout this week and its worst weekly loss since March 2020, if Friday’s losses hold.

“SoftBank Group’s shares are falling as many bought it as the only listed proxy for OpenAI,” said David Gibson, senior research analyst at financial services firm MST Financial.

The pullback reflects growing caution around the AI sector and a realization that many of OpenAI’s partnerships are still potential rather than confirmed, with funding prospects uncertain, he told CNBC.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly said the company has spoken with the U.S. government about potential federal loan guarantees to encourage chip factory construction. His comments came after OpenAI’s CFO suggested the firm hoped for federal help in securing chip financing.

SoftBank holds a controlling stake in U.K.-based semiconductor designer Arm Holdings, whose chips help power mobile and AI processors globally. Shares of Nasdaq-listed Arm slid 1.21% overnight.

Separately, Bloomberg recently reported citing people familiar with the matter that the group considered acquiring U.S. chipmaker Marvell Technology Inc. earlier this year.