Elice falls 32% in debut after IPO draws 408 times demand

Elice fell 32% on its first trading day on Oct. 20 after its IPO attracted demand 408 times the shares available, The Arora Report said in Benzinga contributor commentary.

The decline matters because retail investors deposited $7 billion for the South Korean AI infrastructure company's offering, according to the Oct. 20 commentary, showing a sharp gap between subscription demand and early trading.

The Arora Report said Elice runs GPU cloud infrastructure and AI data centers, comparing the business to CoreWeave Inc. It said the IPO was priced Oct. 6 at the top of its range, before a recent selloff in AI shares.

The commentary framed the debut as a valuation warning for the AI trade. “A 32% one day loss in Elice, at a minimum, should serve as an AI boom warning against paying any price for AI stocks and ignoring valuations,” The Arora Report said.

The post also cited a failed $5 billion IPO attempt by Firmus, an Australian data-center company backed by NVIDIA Corp., saying investors had resisted the valuation.

Separately, The Arora Report said a segment of stock-market investors was selling data-center, defense and bank shares on the prospect of a Democratic sweep in the midterm elections. It attributed pressure on AI data-center names to fears of tighter regulation and a possible pause on new data-center construction.

The commentary also pointed to the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF, a leveraged fund tied to semiconductor stocks, as a gauge of the AI trade. It said a sustained move below its cited support zone would be negative for semiconductors and the wider AI theme.

Benzinga labeled the item as unpaid external contributor content and said it was not edited for content or accuracy. The post listed earnings after the close from Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Netflix Inc., Capital One Financial Corp. and United Airlines Holdings Inc.

Source: unpaid external contributor commentary, Benzinga, Oct. 20, 2026