Tech giants Samsung and SK Hynix both fell sharply when South Korea's Kospi opened, dropping 4.4 percent and 6.6 percent respectively within hours of trading. The index as a whole was down 4.1 percent.
The declines follow a difficult Thursday for several American chip and AI companies, when Broadcom and AMD, among others, saw significant losses.
The trading day in Tokyo is also going poorly. The Nikkei 225 is down 1.2 percent, while the broader Topix is holding around unchanged levels.
In China, the Shenzhen stock exchange rose by 0.1 percent, while Shanghai was also up slightly, having risen 0.3 percent at lunch.
The Hong Kong-based Hang Seng is down 0.8 percent.
