Japan’s Nikkei 225 led gains in Asia as markets in the region rose across the board, following Wall Street’s continued rally for a second straight day.
The Nikkei 225 Index hurtled higher 907.92 points, or 2.4%, to 38,460.08.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index jumped 372.34 points, or 2.2%, to 17,201.27. Shares of Sensetime soared 31.2% before trading was halted at 11:15 a.m. local time.
While it was not immediately clear what prompted the rally, the company held a tech day on Tuesday during which it planned to announce “the latest breakthroughs in SenseTime’s cutting-edge AI technology.”
Chinese media reported that Sensetime unveiled its SenseNova 5.0 AI model. Chairman Xu Li reportedly claimed SenseNova was better than OpenAI’s GPT 4 in the majority of general usage scenarios, especially in enterprise applications and Chinese-language usage scenes.
Korean markets surged, powered by a 4.1% gain in heavyweight Samsung Electronics.
First-quarter inflation figures from Australia on Wednesday showed the consumer price index rose 3.6% year-over-year, slightly above a Reuters poll expectation of a 3.5% rise. Still, that marked its fifth straight quarter of slowing inflation.
In other markets
In Shanghai, the CSI 300 pointed upward 15.4 points, or 0.4%, to 3,521.62.
In Korea, the Kospi strengthened 52.73 points, or 2%, to 2,675.75.
In Singapore, the Straits Times Index advanced 20.41 points, or 0.6%, to 3,293.18.
In Taiwan, the Taiex index rocketed 532.46 points, or 2.7%, to 20,131.74.
In New Zealand, the NZX 50 hiked 143.16 points, or 1.2%, to 11,946.13.
In Australia, the ASX 200 dipped 0.51 points to 7,683.00.
