Japan's stock market has reached a new record high as the global AI-fueled buying spree shows no signs of slowing down.
The Nikkei 225 index climbed nearly 3% in Wednesday's trading session, pushing the benchmark above the 68,000-point milestone for the first time. This marks a record-breaking year for Japanese equities, with the index gaining nearly 33% since the start of 2026.
“Investor enthusiasm for the AI craze is helping lift Asian stock markets higher,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ, in an interview with Al Jazeera. “While strong demand for high-end chips is driving up leading semiconductor companies in Taiwan and South Korea, this also benefits the Japanese market, which is further supported by a weak yen.”
Japanese companies in the semiconductor sector led the rally. Tokyo Electron, Japan's largest chip equipment maker, surged as much as 14% in morning trading. Advantest, a provider of testing equipment for the semiconductor industry, gained over 5.5%. Shin-Etsu Chemical, a supplier of silicon wafers used in integrated circuits, rose about 4%.
Meanwhile, Softbank, the conglomerate heavily invested in AI models, chips and data centers, fell about 3% after overtaking automaker Toyota on Monday to become Japan's largest company by market capitalization.
Enormous demand for AI chips has fueled record-setting rallies in global stock markets, pushing major indices in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to historic highs. Over the past month, three memory chip manufacturers—SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics of South Korea, and Micron of the US—have joined the club of companies with market capitalizations of at least $1 trillion. Only 17 companies have achieved this milestone, all but five of them based in the United States.
Despite concerns over the sustainability of inflated valuations in the sector, technology companies continue to commit massive investments in AI-related infrastructure. According to Goldman Sachs, US tech giants are expected to spend about $800 billion on AI-related capital investments in 2026.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, became the latest Silicon Valley giant to announce AI-related investment plans on Monday, disclosing it will sell $80 billion in shares to fund anticipated capital expenditure of $180 billion to $190 billion in 2026.
