Shares in chipmakers underpinning the AI boom surged in the first half of 2026, with the value of some semiconductor and memory chip manufacturers tripling or more, according to analysis cited by The Guardian. That repricing helped drive Asia Pacific stock markets sharply higher as investors piled into the firms that build the hardware for artificial intelligence.

The key move is simple, and it is the one the market has been rewarding: investors have driven up the value of chipmakers whose profits have soared during 2026. Meanwhile, some large software companies have fallen out of favour this year, as the relative attractiveness of hardware-linked earnings displaced the software narrative, at least in the near term.

To understand why this happens, you have to remember how AI economics tend to show up in markets. AI is not just a model sitting in a lab. It is a supply chain. You need compute to run training and inference, and compute, in practice, means semiconductor and memory chips. When capital markets start believing that AI demand will keep translating into purchases of that hardware, chip suppliers can look like the direct beneficiaries, particularly if their profitability is rising as fast as the AI headline itself.

In the Guardian’s framing, the stock action is tied to that profit shift. Investors are rewarding semiconductor and memory chip manufacturers because their profits have soared during 2026, and they are doing so strongly enough that some chipmaker values have tripled or more. That kind of multiple expansion is not a slow drift. It is a market rerating: investors decide that what used to be “cyclical hardware” is now “central infrastructure for AI.” Once that story gets traction, it can pull liquidity from elsewhere.

Which brings us to the flip side: the software companies that have fallen out of favour. The source is clear that this is happening in 2026, alongside the chip surge. Even if software remains important, capital can still rotate when investors see stronger earnings momentum in another part of the stack. The Guardian says the profit surge at chip firms has come “at the expense of some large software companies.” That implies not that software suddenly became bad, but that the risk-reward calculus for new money changed fast.

There is also a broader market dynamic at work. The Guardian notes that the move in chip stocks has driven Asia Pacific stock markets sharply higher. That matters because regional markets often have concentrated exposure to technology supply chains, especially when multiple companies across countries are tied to the same underlying demand theme. If enough investors reach for the same winners, the whole index can lift, creating momentum that attracts even more investors. This is how the first half of a year can look almost preordained once the narrative locks in.

Regulatory and policy context typically affects semiconductor cycles and AI supply, but the Guardian excerpt does not add specific regulator names or new rule changes. Still, decision-makers should treat the chip surge as the kind of signal that regulators and policymakers will notice, because it shapes where incentives flow. When chip profitability rises and software loses favour, that reshuffles expectations for corporate capex, hiring, and downstream contracting. Boards that previously focused on software growth rates may find their comparative benchmarks shifting toward hardware earnings power.

For executives at software firms, the warning is not to panic. It is to diagnose what investors are paying for. If the market is rewarding near-term profit acceleration tied to semiconductor and memory demand, software players may need to clarify either (1) how they capture value from AI compute usage, or (2) why their own earnings trajectory is likely to improve despite the current rotation. For chipmakers and their suppliers, the strategic stake is different: a tripling or more in value during a short window can create pressure to sustain growth, manage capacity, and keep margins from getting squeezed by intensifying competition or demand normalization. In the boardroom, that means risk management must keep pace with optimism.

For everyone else watching Asia-Pacific equities, the second-order implication is that AI-related capital flows are not evenly distributed across the stack. In the first half of 2026, investors have concentrated on semiconductor and memory hardware, lifting chipmakers and pushing down some software sentiment. If that pattern continues, it will shape valuation narratives well beyond any single earnings report, influencing funding priorities and competitive strategies across the AI ecosystem.