Emerging-market stocks rally as investors shift focus to smaller tech firms

For the better part of two years, emerging-market tech investing had a pretty simple playbook: buy the biggest chipmakers, sit back, and collect returns. That playbook is getting a rewrite. Investors are rotating out of dominant semiconductor names like Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics, redirecting capital toward smaller firms that build the less glamorous but equally essential components powering AI data centers. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is up roughly 22% year-to-date, and the gains are increasingly coming from companies most people have never heard of. The new names driving the rally Companies like King Slide Works Co, Henan Shijia Photons Technology Co, and EverProX Technologies Co have posted stock price gains of as much as 90% within the MSCI EM Index. These aren’t household names. They make server components, cooling systems, and optical connectivity equipment, the plumbing and wiring that keeps AI data centers running. Earlier in the year, the MSCI EM IT sector surged 62% in a concentrated run that was dominated almost entirely by large-cap semiconductor stocks. The broadening into smaller infrastructure plays is being read as a sign of healthier, more sus...