A surge in tech firms helped Tokyo’s Nikkei lead most Asian equities higher on Friday as investors headed into the weekend on a broadly positive note, with US rate-cut hopes out-muscling concerns about a government shutdown.

The rally across world markets this year has largely been fuelled by companies ploughing billions of dollars into all things artificial intelligence, and traders not wanting to miss out on the action.

That has helped push the valuations of some of the biggest names to eye-watering levels — with US chip titan Nvidia topping $4 trillion — and several markets to record highs.

This week has seen extra momentum after South Korean semiconductor giants Samsung and SK hynix said they had struck a preliminary deal with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI to supply chips and other e

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