{"text":[[{"start":5.6,"text":"Shares in a data centre infrastructure provider sank more than 30 per cent on their first day of trading in South Korea, adding to growing investor concern about valuations in the AI sector."}],[{"start":17.44,"text":"Elice’s weak performance came amid a continued sell-off of semiconductor stocks in Seoul as investors continued to fret about the durability of AI spending."}],[{"start":27.84,"text":"Shares fell 32 per cent to Won61,400 ($46.28) on the tech-heavy Kosdaq on Tuesday, far below the IPO price of Won90,500."}],[{"start":40.258,"text":"The Kospi Composite slid 3 per cent, with SK Hynix down 4.6 per cent and Samsung Electronics falling 1.6 per cent. The two chipmakers account for about half of the index, which has shed a fifth of its value in the past month."}],[{"start":58.08,"text":"The declines come despite US tech stocks recovering some ground overnight after the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index fell 5.5 per cent last week."}],[{"start":66.82,"text":"Elice raised about Won201bn ($151mn) after the neocloud company priced its shares at the top of its indicative range in the biggest IPO on the Kosdaq this year."}],[{"start":80.16,"text":"The offering was heavily subscribed with strong demand from local retail investors. More than Won10tn was committed in subscription deposits by investors seeking shares, with the retail portion subscribed more than 400 times."}],[{"start":95.92,"text":"Elice’s disappointing market debut follows the decision less than two weeks ago by Nvidia-backed data centre operator Firmus to abandon its $5bn IPO in Australia."}],[{"start":105.197,"text":"The AI trade has recently been hit by concerns over higher financing costs, intensifying competition and uncertain long-term returns on substantial AI investments, with listing plans disrupted worldwide."}],[{"start":119.76,"text":"Shares in CoreWeave have more than halved from the May peak, while investors fret about Nscale’s IPO valuation target."}],[{"start":126.24,"text":"Peter Lee, a Citi analyst, said: “Higher interest rates are fuelling concern over the sustainability of AI investments.”"}],[{"start":131.44,"text":"In an effort to build investor confidence, Elice stressed strong financial improvement in its prospectus, with revenue for the first half of the year tripling to Won34.4bn ($25.9mn)."}],[{"start":144.769,"text":"The company was set up in 2015 as a coding education platform by three doctoral students at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. It later shifted its focus to AI cloud infrastructure, offering servers, liquid-cooled chips, cloud computing and networking infrastructure and software."}],[{"start":164.365,"text":"Elice has also developed a modular data centre platform that allows them to be built more quickly. Its technology features high-density power systems and advanced liquid-cooling technology to support clusters of high-performance AI chips."}],[{"start":177.36,"text":"With financial backing from venture capital firms such as Vertex Ventures and Altos Ventures, Elice intends to use the IPO proceeds to expand its domestic AI data centre operations and expand globally."}],[{"start":190.533,"text":"Separately, shares in Mynt posted modest gains in Manila on Tuesday after the owner of digital wallet provider GCash made its trading debut in the Philippines’ biggest IPO."}],[{"start":204.96,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792476152_6379.mp3"}