Data-center firm Elice Inc. slid sharply in its South Korean trading debut Tuesday on doubts about the industry's outlook, according to Bloomberg. Shares of the Seoul-based neocloud service provider fell as much as 33% to 61,000 won in early Kosdaq trading. The company raised 201 billion won ($151 million), pricing shares at 90,500 won — the top of the marketed range — for a post-listing market value above 1 trillion won; retail subscription ran above 400 times.

The debut lands as AI infrastructure appetite sours after global setbacks: Firmus Grid canceled its Sydney listing this month amid concern over borrowing costs, fierce competition and long-term returns from massive AI spending; CoreWeave's shares have more than halved from their May peak; AirTrunk is delaying a planned REIT IPO, people familiar with the matter said; and Nscale faces pushback over its target valuation.

"Elice's debut comes at a time when sentiment toward AI infrastructure companies has weakened, particularly in the US," said Albert Yong, managing partner and chief investment officer at Petra Capital Management. "Sentiment toward AI infrastructure has been highly volatile and often disconnected from underlying fundamentals." South Korea is also weighing whether SK Hynix unit Solidigm's proposed US IPO counts as a "duplicate listing," amid lawmaker calls for tougher minority-shareholder protection.

Retail subscription deposits reached roughly 10.3 trillion won; if the drop holds, it would be the worst opening day after a Korea IPO that raised at least $100 million, past the 30% plunge by W-Scope Chungju Plant in 2022. "The healthy retail order book for Elice's listing is a testament to investors' eagerness to participate in what will surely be a massive need for AI infrastructure in the coming years," said Hans Stege, head of investment research at PrePublic Equity Partners. "But that buildout will require well-functioning debt markets as well, and we are seeing a lot of pencil sharpening around cash flows and capital stacks as a result."

Its prospectus shows first-half revenue surged 200% to 34.4 billion won, swinging to an operating profit of 10.3 billion won as EBITDA jumped more than 11-fold to 23.2 billion won; analyst Douglas Kim wrote on Smartkarma that 2026 sales are set to rise 83% on an operating margin of about 33%. Zian Investment Management CEO Kim Dojoon said Elice's financial structure differs from CoreWeave's and investors need not view it as "particularly risky," though "It remains to be seen whether the company can maintain its current profitability."

Founded in 2015 by three KAIST doctorate students, Elice began as a coding education platform before pivoting to AI cloud infrastructure — servers, liquid-cooled chips, networking gear and software — and now builds a modular data center platform with high-density power systems and advanced liquid cooling for AI chip clusters.

First-time listings in Seoul have raised $1.4 billion this year versus more than $3 billion in each of the prior three years, per Bloomberg-compiled data; Elice's IPO is the year's biggest on the Kosdaq, second only to K Bank's $337 million March offering nationally. CEO Jae Won Kim said proceeds will fund AI data centers at home and abroad, with Mirae Asset Securities and Samsung Securities as lead underwriters. "We're going all-in on becoming a full-stack AI infrastructure leader globally," he said. "This IPO is about giving ourselves the financial firepower to execute."