South Korean artificial-intelligence infrastructure company Elice Group fell as much as 32% in its stock-market debut Tuesday, turning a heavily subscribed IPO into another test of investor appetite for the AI infrastructure trade.
Elice priced its shares at 90,500 won, the top of its indicated range, and raised approximately 201.1 billion won, or about $150 million.
The shares opened below the offer price and fell as low as 61,000 won during the session, a decline of roughly 32.6%.
The weak debut came despite strong demand before listing. Institutional subscriptions were almost 389 times the shares available, while retail demand exceeded 400 times the allocation.
Elice began as an AI education platform but has expanded into cloud computing, GPU-based data centers and enterprise AI services.
The company intends to use IPO proceeds partly to expand modular data-center infrastructure.
Its first-half revenue approximately tripled to 34 billion won, while operating profit reached about 10 billion won.
The market reaction nevertheless shows how rapidly sentiment toward AI infrastructure has changed.
Investors have become increasingly focused on the amount of debt and capital required to construct data centers and whether future AI revenue can generate adequate returns on that spending.
Elice’s debut therefore matters beyond one relatively small Korean listing.
Several AI infrastructure companies globally have faced greater scrutiny as investors reassess valuations across the sector.
The next test is whether Elice stabilizes after the initial repricing. A sustained discount to its IPO valuation would provide another signal that private-market enthusiasm for AI infrastructure is no longer translating automatically into public-market demand.
