Can Asia’s AI ‘losers’ reshuffle the leaderboard?

As investors grow increasingly wary of the US-led artificial intelligence frenzy, some “AI losers” in Asia may start to see their fortunes change.

- Manishi Raychaudhuri

This Sept 30 file photo shows an artificial intelligence robot playing a game of Gomoku during the Seoul AI Robot Show in Seoul, South Korea. BLOOMBERG

(BLOOMBERG)

The markets’ fascination with AI has boosted the “Magnificent Seven” — Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — as well as Asian AI leaders, including chip and memory manufacturers in Taiwan and Korea and large language model (LLM) developers listed in Hong Kong.

In contrast, Indian and Southeast Asian equities have underperformed enormously. That’s not only because direct AI beneficiaries are hard to find in these regions, but also because some key sectors there face serious threats from rapid Al adoption or from simple investor apathy.

Asia’s service sector is highly at risk of Al disruption.

Routine and repetitive jobs like call centres, telemarketing, accounting, and administrative support are particularly vulnerable as state-of-the-art AI technology gets more proficient.

It’s therefore unsurprising that several Indian information technology (IT) service companies, including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro Technologies, have underperformed sharply in the past year.