Elice falls 33% in South Korean trading debut

South Korean AI infrastructure company Elice Group fell about 33% on its first day of trading on October 20, closing at 60,500 won, well below its 90,500-won initial public offering price. The decline came despite heavy demand for the shares before trading began and added to investor scrutiny of spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure. Elice raised about 201 billion won, or roughly $150 million, in the offering. Institutional orders were reported at nearly 389 times the available allocation, while retail subscriptions exceeded 400 times. The shares had been priced at the top of the marketed range, according to reports on the offering. The company said it planned to use most of the proceeds to develop modular data centres and related infrastructure. Elice provides AI cloud services as well as education and business software, and has expanded into data-centre infrastructure designed for AI computing. The share decline coincided with a 3.73% fall in South Korea’s KOSPI, which closed at 5,552.74. AI-linked shares also weakened in other markets. CoreWeave fell in U.S. premarket trading, while reports described declines among several technology and semiconductor stocks....