Tech Sell-Off Cuts More Than $18 Billion From the Fortunes of 22 Asian Billionaires

The group, drawn from China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea and all ranked among the world's 500 richest people, had lost more than $21 billion by 10 a.m. Hong Kong time before the losses narrowed to just over $18 billion. Much of their wealth is tied to companies at the centre of the semiconductor and digital infrastructure boom, which have been among the hardest hit.

Masayoshi Son, founder of SoftBank Group, was the biggest loser, with about $3.9 billion wiped from his fortune, leaving him with close to $29 billion. SoftBank has been one of the most heavily exposed large companies to AI, and the cost of insuring its debt against default has climbed this week.

Others hit included Takemitsu Takizaki, founder of the Japanese sensor maker Keyence, and Jason Chang, Singapore's richest person, whose wealth is linked to the chip assembly and packaging group ASE Technology Holding. The Samsung family, including Jay Y. Lee, his mother and his sister, lost about $2.5 billion as Samsung Electronics shares fell.

The pressure has also reached investors who borrowed to bet on technology stocks. Wealthy clients of brokerages from Taiwan to Hong Kong have faced margin calls on leveraged positions, according to people familiar with the matter cited in the report. Hedge funds including Tiger Global Management and Whale Rock Capital Management came under strain last month amid concern about the scale of AI spending and the returns it will produce.

The Asian losses followed a slide in US technology shares in which the Nasdaq 100 lost about $2.3 trillion in market value. Investors have been weighing the chance that a shift in control of the US Congress after the midterm elections will slow the construction of data centres, the physical base of the AI build-out. The rout also pushed Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang out of the list of the world's ten richest people.

Chip stocks rebounded in US premarket trading on Friday, a test of whether the week's losses for Asia's technology founders will hold.