A dispute over Meta's plans to sell surplus computing resources externally has reignited talk of an AI investment bubble. Eugene Investment & Securities, a South Korean brokerage, takes the opposite view: it sees the episode as evidence that the market for leasing AI computing power is becoming more, not less, lucrative.
In a "Memory Watch" report published on the 13th, the firm argued that "what matters is not the existence of idle capacity, but whether a market exists to monetise it." The fact that even older-generation GPUs can now be sold externally, the analysts contend, indicates that the return on equity from AI computing rental income has risen.
Meta has meanwhile pressed ahead with its expansion plans. The company announced the start of construction on a 1-gigawatt data centre in Canada — scalable to 1.8GW — at a cost of $9.17bn. It also disclosed plans to double its AI data-centre infrastructure from 7GW in 2026 to 14GW in 2027.
Eugene Investment & Securities was direct in its rebuttal of the bears: "The concern that surplus computing resources will slow data-centre investment is far removed from reality."
Market moves during the period told a divided story. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) rose 2.7% on the week and Meta's share price surged 14.8%, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — South Korea's two dominant memory chipmakers — fell 7.9% and 10.1% respectively. The report attributed the Korean stocks' weakness to a combination of the Meta surplus-computing controversy and distortions in supply and demand within the South Korean equity market.
The analysts concluded with a call for composure. "Both top-down and bottom-up analysis confirm that AI data-centre investment continues, cash flows remain healthy, and memory bottlenecks will not be resolved easily," the report stated. "In turbulent times, the ability to focus on fundamentals matters most."