SK Hynix raises $26.5b in record US listing amid AI chip boom

South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix began trading on the Nasdaq after launching its new US listing on Friday, cashing in on the surging demand driven by the global buildout of artificial intelligence.

The company priced its American depositary receipts at $149 apiece on Thursday, only to see them open at $170 on the Nasdaq on Friday morning.

The sale of 177.9 million ADRs raised proceeds of $26.5 billion. An ADR is a type of certificate that lets US investors buy a foreign stock without trading directly on an overseas exchange. Each ADR represents a tenth of a common share.

The offering was the largest US share sale by a foreign issuer and the second-largest public offering — behind SpaceX's $85.7 billion IPO in June — and surpassed both Saudi Aramco's $25.6 billion listing in 2019 and Alibaba's $25 billion offering in 2014.

SK Hynix said that the proceeds would go toward building new chip factories in South Korea and purchasing manufacturing equipment, including extreme ultraviolet lithography scanners from Dutch supplier ASML.

The company CEO, Kwak Noh-Jung, told Bloomberg following the offering that customers are signing long-term supply contracts because "they believe that the shortage situation will last for longer". Kwak expects the current chip shortage to persist potentially well into the next decade.

The listing arrives as SK Hynix rides an unprecedented surge in demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which move data inside AI systems at high speed with low power consumption and are essential components for AI hardware built by customers including Nvidia and Google.

SK Hynix, which recently deepened its partnership with Nvidia on advanced memory chips, has outperformed its rivals — Samsung and Micron — over the past year. Its first-quarter revenue jumped nearly 200 percent year-on-year, and its stock has surged roughly 260 percent so far this year.

As hyperscalers — or large cloud providers that handle huge AI workloads such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle — race to build out AI data centers, memory chip demand has consistently outpaced supply, pushing up prices across the board. Apple has raised prices on Macs and iPads, citing higher costs for memory components.

AI enthusiasm has spread across Asian chip supply chains more broadly. Unimicron Technology, a Taiwan-based printed circuit board maker, recently raised $1.36 billion through a global depositary share sale, with its stock up more than 700 percent over the past year.

Analysts describe the current environment as a memory "super cycle", with Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron all benefiting simultaneously. Some market watchers see SK Hynix's US listing as a way to broaden its investor base and narrow its valuation gap with Micron, though others caution that demand remains robust for now even as volatility persists.

Others have flagged risks of "memory inflation" eventually denting spending on AI infrastructure, smartphones, and PCs, noting that the cycle has entered its mid-stage.

South Korean firms led by SK Hynix and Samsung plan to invest more than $500 billion in new domestic memory fabs, a bet analysts warn could leave the industry oversupplied if AI's memory needs shift by the time those factories come online.

For some observers, the listing carries significance beyond financial markets.

"This is significant because the real story of the semiconductor industry is not about the US versus China — it is about the multilateral ecosystem in which South Korea, Japan, and the Netherlands are just as important as either of the great powers," Ker Gibbs, former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and author of The Fragile Dragon, told China Daily. "We all need each other."

It's a theme he explores at length in his book, where he draws a comparison between semiconductors and oil as strategic resources nations depend on and compete over.

Gibbs pointed to history as a cautionary note, arguing that Washington should tread carefully as it tightens restrictions on China's access to chip technology. In his view, the two governments need to find a way to manage their differences without cornering one another.

He also noted the irony embedded in the timing of SK Hynix's move: even as technology ties between the United States and China remain constrained by export controls and other policy measures, a South Korean company has chosen this moment to list in New York, placing itself at the center of global capital markets and closer to where much of AI innovation is happening.

Capital markets, he suggested, remain "a great integrating force" pulling the world's major economies together.