South Korea's Elice Data Center IPO Plunges 32% as AI Infrastructure Skepticism Spreads Globally

South Korea's Elice Inc., a neocloud and AI cloud services provider billed as the country's answer to CoreWeave, cratered as much as 32% on its Kosdaq debut Tuesday, falling to 61,400 won from an IPO price of 90,500 won per share. The company had raised 201 billion won, roughly $151 million, in the bourse's largest IPO of the year, pricing at the top of its marketed range. The plunge rattled already fragile investor confidence in AI infrastructure spending, sending South Korea's KOSPI benchmark down roughly 7.5% on the day, extending a decline that has put the index some 40% below its record high, as heavy concentrations in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix amplified losses.

The Elice flop is the latest in a string of AI-related listing failures in October alone. Peer Firmus scrapped its high-profile South Korean listing earlier in the month, and MarketWatch reported that three separate data-center flotations backed by Nvidia, Blackstone and SoftBank were shelved during October as investors questioned the sustainability of the massive capital expenditure cycle underpinning the AI trade. European chip stocks fell more than 4% in sympathy, and S&P and Nasdaq futures slipped as the AI selloff deepened.

Against the backdrop of soured IPO sentiment, OpenAI is accelerating its own fundraising, racing to lock in investor commitments before rival Anthropic's expected public market debut in mid-November. Sources told Reuters the effort is unusually fast-paced and could value the ChatGPT maker at more than $1.4 trillion, with OpenAI seeking to raise roughly $30 billion before Anthropic's filings allow direct comparisons. Separately, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordered all federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek and services built on the Chinese AI model from their systems, while also blocking new purchases, marking another escalation in Washington's restrictions on Chinese AI technology.

Not all voices turned bearish. Fundstrat's Tom Lee said investors should buy the AI dip, citing Cisco's historical trajectory as precedent for recoveries after infrastructure build-out concerns. The Pentagon's investment arm is also reportedly in talks to lend $5 billion toward domestic AI hardware manufacturing, a signal that government-backed demand could provide a floor under parts of the supply chain.