Elice Group Drops 32% in South Korean IPO Debut as AI Shares Weaken

Elice Group, a South Korean AI cloud provider, fell 32.04% in its Oct. 20 stock market debut, while CoreWeave Inc. also slipped before the U.S. open amid questions about AI infrastructure spending.

Elice ended its first regular KOSDAQ session at 61,500 won a share, down 29,000 won from its 90,500-won IPO price. The session closed at 2:30 a.m. ET (06:30 UTC) on Oct. 20.

The company raised about $151 million in the offering after pricing its shares at the top of the range. Retail subscriptions were 408.26 times the shares available, while institutional demand reached 388.8 times. Elice plans to use the proceeds to expand regional AI infrastructure and next-generation GPU capacity.

At 8:08 a.m. ET (12:08 UTC) on Oct. 20, CoreWeave shares were 4% lower ahead of regular U.S. trading. South Korea’s KOSPI closed 3.73% lower at 5,552.74 that day. The declines came as investors weighed the cost of building AI data centers against the returns those projects might produce.