Sarah Kunst of Cleo Capital eyes TSMC, global chips beyond Nvidia

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  January 09, 2026 at 12:16  |  3:20  |  CNBC
Speakers
Sarah Kunst — Cleo Capital Founder

Summary

Sarah Kunst, Managing Director at Cleo Capital, discusses the semiconductor investment landscape. She argues AI chip leaders are not yet ramping capex, favors global and non-U.S. chip names, and is particularly bullish on South Korean chipmakers and TSMC. She also highlights retail access constraints, rotation away from U.S. volatility, and longer-term questions about the AI trade.

  • Sarah Kunst says AI chip leaders are not making large new manufacturing capacity commitments.
  • She sees retail investor demand for hard-to-access non-U.S. chip names.
  • She is bullish on South Korean chipmakers, naming Samsung and SK hynix.
  • She continues to like TSMC, citing reasonable pricing and memory space opportunity.
  • She expects demand for non-U.S. names to rotate investors away from U.S. volatility.
  • She flags longer-term uncertainty about whether the AI trade stays as hot.
  • She likes the trend of long-established companies becoming AI-era winners again.
Ideas
Sarah Kunst Cleo Capital Founder 1:37
Korean chipmakers see room to run.
Retail investors, who drive much of the current stock rally, find it difficult to access South Korean chipmakers such as Samsung and SK hynix. She expects growing demand for these harder-to-access non-U.S. names to drive appreciation in international indexes and rotate investors out of elevated U.S. volatility, and she sees room to run on these names.
Sarah Kunst Cleo Capital Founder 2:39
TSMC has memory upside, reasonable valuation.
She continues to like Taiwan Semiconductor, viewing it as well priced and seeing room to run in the memory space. She notes announced deals allow it to work in memory as well and calls it a name she really likes.
Up Next

This CNBC video, published January 09, 2026, features Sarah Kunst discussing South Korean chipmakers, 005930.KS, 000660.KS, TSM. 2 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Sarah Kunst  · Tickers: South Korean chipmakers, 005930.KS, 000660.KS, TSM