Elice shares fell 32% to Won61,400 ($46.28) on the tech-heavy Kosdaq on Tuesday, the data centre infrastructure provider's first day of trading in South Korea. The closing price was far below the IPO price of Won90,500. The weak debut added to growing investor concern about AI sector valuations. The decline came amid continued selling of semiconductor stocks in Seoul as investors worried about the durability of AI spending.
Elice raised about Won201 billion ($151 million) after pricing shares at the top of the indicative range. The neocloud company's offering was the biggest IPO on the Kosdaq this year. The offering attracted strong demand from local retail investors. Investors committed more than Won10 trillion in subscription deposits to seek shares. The retail portion was subscribed more than 400 times.
The Kospi Composite slid 3% on Tuesday. SK Hynix shares fell 4.6%. Samsung Electronics shares fell 1.6%. The two chipmakers account for about half of the index, which has lost a fifth of its value in the past month. The declines came despite US technology stocks recovering some ground overnight. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index fell 5.5% last week.
Elice's debut followed Nvidia-backed data centre operator Firmus abandoning a $5 billion IPO in Australia less than two weeks ago. Concerns about higher financing costs, intensifying competition and uncertain long-term returns on substantial AI investments have recently weakened AI-related investments and disrupted listing plans worldwide. CoreWeave shares have more than halved from the May peak. Investors are worried about Nscale's IPO valuation target. Citi analyst Peter Lee said higher interest rates are fuelling concern about the sustainability of AI investments.
Elice highlighted strong financial improvement in the prospectus to build investor confidence. The prospectus showed that revenue for the first half of the year tripled to Won34.4 billion ($25.9 million). Three doctoral students at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology established Elice in 2015 as a coding education platform. Elice later shifted focus to AI cloud infrastructure, offering servers, liquid-cooled chips, cloud computing, networking infrastructure and software.
Elice has developed a modular data centre platform that allows data centres to be built more quickly. The platform features high-density power systems and advanced liquid-cooling technology to support clusters of high-performance AI chips. Elice has financial backing from venture capital firms including Vertex Ventures and Altos Ventures. Elice intends to use the IPO proceeds to expand domestic AI data centre operations and expand globally.
Separately, Mynt shares posted modest gains in Manila on Tuesday after Mynt made a trading debut in the Philippines' biggest IPO. Mynt owns digital wallet provider GCash.
Elice Shares Tumble 32% on Kosdaq Debut Amid AI Sector Concerns
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Summary
Elice shares dropped 32% to Won61,400 ($46.28) on the Kosdaq on October 20, 2026, marking a weak on-chain data debut for the data centre infrastructure provider. The closing price was significantly below the IPO price of Won90,500. The offering raised about Won201 billion ($151 million) after pricing at the top of the indicative range. Retail investors committed over Won10 trillion in subscription deposits, with the retail portion oversubscribed more than 400 times. On-chain analysis shows growing unease in the AI sector as valuations come under pressure.
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