SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in Nasdaq debut (largest foreign IPO on US markets); CEO warned 2027 will be 'worst year' for memory shortage, crunch to last until 2030.
SK Hynix commenced trading on Nasdaq on Thursday under the ticker SKHY, raising $26.5 billion in the largest-ever US initial public offering by a foreign company. The South Korean chipmaker priced 177.9 million American depositary shares at $149 each, surpassing Alibaba's $25 billion New York listing in 2014. The stock closed at $168.01, a 13% gain that pushed the company's market capitalization past $1.19 trillion.
The offering was more than seven times oversubscribed, reflecting intense institutional appetite for direct US-listed exposure to the AI memory chip supply chain. Three cornerstone investors—Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited, Coatue Management, and Situational Awareness Partners—indicated interest in purchasing up to $7 billion of shares, roughly 25% of the deal.
SK Hynix is the dominant global supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the specialized component that enables AI processors to handle massive datasets. The company controls more than half the worldwide HBM market and is a critical supplier to Nvidia, whose chips underpin the global AI infrastructure buildout. Chairman Chey Tae-won told CNBC the listing was "a kind of dream, and now it's a dream come true," noting that customer demand far outstrips production capacity. "All my customers said that, 'Well, that's not enough, man, and well, we need more,'" he said.
BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan served as global lead coordinators. Each ADS represents one-tenth of an ordinary SK Hynix share already trading on the Korea Exchange under ticker 000660. The $26.5 billion raise makes this Nasdaq debut the second-largest US listing in history, behind only SpaceX's June 2026 offering.
SK Hynix reported approximately $65 billion in revenue and $28 billion in net profit for fiscal year 2025, with earnings roughly doubling year-over-year on surging memory chip demand and elevated pricing. US customers accounted for 68.8% of the company's 2025 revenue.
SK Hynix is one of three primary manufacturers of computer memory alongside Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology, but has carved out a commanding lead in HBM, the high-performance memory stacked inside Nvidia's H100, H200, and Blackwell GPU chips. That position has made SK Hynix an essential node in the AI supply chain, effectively the fuel system for the AI accelerator market dominated by Nvidia, which currently carries a $5.1 trillion market cap. Competitor Micron, also trading on Nasdaq, closed at $979.30 on Thursday with a market cap of $1.1 trillion, making the two HBM rivals roughly comparable in US market valuation.
The company plans to deploy IPO proceeds toward aggressive manufacturing expansion. In the United States, SK Hynix is constructing a $4 billion advanced packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, scheduled for completion in 2028. Advanced packaging is a critical step in producing HBM chips, which require multiple memory layers to be stacked and connected with precision. In South Korea, the company is building a new fabrication hub in Yongin and an advanced packaging facility in Cheongju to address AI demand that currently outpaces production capacity.
SK Hynix, acquired by SK Group in 2012 through its investment arm SK Square, previously traded only on Seoul's exchange where it ranked as South Korea's second-most valuable firm. The Nasdaq listing gives US investors direct exposure to the company and is expected to help close the historical valuation discount to comparable US semiconductor firms, positioning the stock for potential inclusion in major US indices.
The debut underscores the centrality of memory chips to the AI infrastructure buildout. While Nvidia designs the processors, SK Hynix supplies the memory that determines how much data those processors can handle—a bottleneck that has made HBM allocation one of the most contested resources in the semiconductor industry.
The offering signals robust appetite for large-scale semiconductor listings in the IPO market. The seven-times oversubscription and 13% first-day pop suggest institutional investors remain eager to deploy capital into AI infrastructure plays, even at trillion-dollar valuations.
SK Hynix shares will transition from the temporary ticker SKHYV to the permanent ticker SKHY when regular-way trading begins on Tuesday, July 13. Competitive pressures bear monitoring: Samsung Electronics is investing aggressively in its own HBM development, and Micron has advanced its HBM roadmap to challenge SK Hynix's market share lead. Nvidia's potential diversification of its memory suppliers remains a key risk to the company's dominant position.