Asian markets cap AI-fueled year with record-breaking rally

This market wrap is a reminder that, for now, the clearest quantitative impact of the race to AGI shows up in asset prices, not in benchmarks. A 72% annual gain in South Korea’s equity index, with AI and semiconductor names in the driver’s seat, underlines how much capital is being pulled into the infrastructure layer—chips, data centers, memory—rather than just model vendors. When global stock indices hit records and analysts attribute a large chunk of that to AI narratives, it changes the political economy of AI overnight: governments, pension funds and retail investors are now financially exposed to the success or failure of AI bets. ([reuters.com](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/global-markets-wrapup-1-pix-2025-12-24/))

For AGI timelines, a year like this tends to shorten horizons. Easy capital for data centers and accelerators lowers the cost of pushing model scale, while soaring equity valuations make it easier for AI leaders to stockpile talent and compute via share-based deals. But it also raises the risk of a sharp correction if expected productivity gains don’t materialize quickly enough, which could trigger a chilling effect on more speculative long-term research.

The competitive implication is that countries whose public markets can sustain this kind of AI-driven exuberance—like the US, Korea and parts of Asia—will have more domestic firepower to fund the next wave of frontier models and supporting infrastructure than those relying solely on state budgets or bank lending.