Nvidia has announced a significant $2.1 billion investment in IREN as part of a strategic AI data centre partnership. According to latest reports, IREN shares surged around 9% in extended trading following the announcement, with the stock having closed at $56.85 in regular hours. The partnership involves IREN issuing to Nvidia a five-year right to buy up to 30 million shares at an exercise price of $70 per share. This deal is designed to accelerate the deployment of large-scale AI factories by combining Nvidia's factory architecture with IREN's infrastructure operations, with future deployments expected to focus on IREN's 2-gigawatt Sweetwater campus in Texas. The investment comes as all four US tech giants reported results last week and signalled AI spending would not slow, with combined outlays set to surpass $700 billion this year.
Nvidia's market capitalization has reached $5.05 trillion, surpassing India's entire equity market valuation of $5 trillion. According to reports from Mint, this transformation highlights how the artificial intelligence frenzy has created a new financial superpower. The company, once primarily known for gaming chips, has evolved into the backbone of the global AI industry. In less than three years, Nvidia's valuations have surged almost five times from $101 trillion as of 2023, driven by its swift transformation from a niche graphics-chip designer into a dominant AI infrastructure provider.
Taiwan has firmly seized the top position within the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, now representing 24.84 percent of its weight, a significant shift from China's previous dominance. This ascent is powered by an AI hardware boom, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) alone accounting for over 40 percent of the TAIEX's market value. TSMC's role as the indispensable manufacturer of advanced AI chips for global tech leaders like Nvidia and Apple has driven its market capitalization to an estimated $1.8 trillion, contributing to Taiwan's total market cap nearing $4.6 trillion. The TAIEX itself reached an unprecedented 40,000 points in early May 2026, reflecting broad gains across the tech sector. As per The Economic Times, shares in South Korea and Taiwan have rallied the most in the world this month, with the surge in the Kospi index taking it up 78% for the year.
South Korea's Kospi index mirrors this AI-driven success, crossing the 7,000-point threshold for the first time on May 6, 2026. The nation's market capitalization now stands at approximately $4.59 trillion, surpassing Canada to become the world's seventh-largest equity market. This surge is predominantly attributed to memory chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, whose HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) chips are crucial for AI applications. Samsung Electronics recently broke the $1 trillion market capitalization barrier, while SK Hynix also achieved record highs, contributing to the Kospi's 75 percent year-to-date gain in 2026. Semiconductors now constitute roughly 60 percent of the Kospi's operating profit. As reported by The Economic Times, Korean shares have been so in demand that Interactive Brokers Group Inc. started giving US retail investors direct access to the market, with assets under management for leveraged exchange-traded funds surging to a peak.
In contrast to the AI-driven success of Taiwan and South Korea, India's equity markets have experienced a decline of approximately 7 percent year-to-date in 2026, following a modest 2 percent growth in 2025. While large Indian IT firms like TCS and Infosys contribute AI-related services, these are primarily application-layer businesses, lacking the foundational hardware and chip design capabilities that drive the current AI boom. As reported by Mint, India has no listed equivalent to TSMC or a robust pipeline of public AI chip design startups. Christopher Wood of Jefferies has described India as a 'reverse AI trade', with global investors pouring money into AI-linked markets such as the US, Taiwan and South Korea, while India underperformed that rally. However, India has overtaken China as the world's most populous country and is positioning itself as the leading destination for manufacturing capacity that multinationals are relocating from China. According to The Economic Times, JPMorgan strategists recommended bullish structures on the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF, expecting the equities to continue to outperform given the AI theme, a more supportive macro backdrop and strong fundamentals.
