[Anchor]

Whenever questions have been raised about investments and profitability as the AI theme began to drive the stock market, the market has shaken.

Reporter Min Gyeongho analyzes what was different this time that led to a sharp drop.

[Reporter]

Experts explain that this high volatility is fundamentally because we have never experienced an industry like the AI sector before.

There is no way of knowing just how large the industry can grow or whether a cycle even exists.

However, because falling behind once means becoming obsolete, companies are busy investing regardless of uncertain profitability.

[Christophe Fouquet / ASML CEO (December of last year): It is a kind of arms race. If you don't invest now, you get left behind.]

As a result, the stock market, which weighs profitability, has fluctuated whenever concerns arose regarding investment scale and profitability.

This time, doubts were raised at the level of a specific industry rather than individual AI companies.

Projections emerged that AI data center revenue must reach 8.5 trillion dollars by 2030 to achieve target profits, but it is likely to fall short at best around 3.6 trillion dollars.

Market research firm Gartner specifically pointed to the neocloud industry.

It is a cloud service specialized in AI model training and inference based GPUs, and it warned that 80 percent of this industry may not survive.

The stock price of CoreWeave, a representative neocloud stock, immediately plummeted by 15 percent.

Whenever questions about profitability were raised in the past, big tech firms such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Micron provided answers based on their earnings, and stock prices rebounded.

Experts note that the essence of the doubts raised this time is the same, and they are paying attention to the earnings announcements of big tech companies starting in earnest next week.

[Lee Jin-woo / Head of Research Center, Meritz Securities: Ultimately, the ones right at the center need to provide a solution once again. More specific explanations must reassure the market to overcome this, otherwise we will just return to the same recurring loop.]

It is also worth noting what message will come out from the U.S. Federal Reserve's interest rate decision scheduled for the early morning of the 29th, Korean time.

The higher-than-expected September Consumer Price Index inflation rate served as a major factor in the stock price decline, because additional interest rate hikes increase capital financing costs and ultimately worsen investment profitability.

(Video Editing: Kim Jong-mi)