Chip giant SK Hynix raises $26.5bn as shares surge in bumper US listing
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Chip giant SK Hynix raises $26.5bn as shares surge in bumper US listing
10 July 2026
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Osmond Chiaand
Francisco Velasquez,Business reporters
Getty Images
SK Hynix shares started trading in the US on Friday.
South Korean computer chip maker SK Hynix has raised $26.5bn (£19.8bn) in its New York share offering, marking the largest ever listing by a foreign firm in the US.
The company, a key supplier to AI chip giant Nvidia, said on Thursday it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares for $149 each. The shares surged as much as 17% on Friday in their first day of trading on the Nasdaq.
SK Hynix saw its market value top $1tn in its home country in May, lifted by the boom in demand for AI chips.
Its share price has more than tripled in South Korea this year, which along with Samsung Electronics has helped boost the benchmark Kospi index by more than 70% over the same period.
SK Hynix is one of the world's leading memory chip makers. The industry has been given a major boost by the hundreds of billions being spent on AI.
Shares in rivals Samsung Electronics and Micron have more than doubled in recent months.
The debut comes after the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) said this week a global surge in AI infrastructure spending is actively shielding tech-heavy economies, including South Korea, from the growth-stifling effects of the war in the Middle East.
The US listing gives SK Hynix easier access to huge amounts of potential investment from the world's biggest economy, which has fewer barriers than South Korea, said Seoul National University finance professor Jaewon Choi.
Traders are closely watching the listing as a "yardstick to test the water" for whether investor enthusiasm for memory chip makers will continue, Choi said.
The AI boom has triggered a rush of companies raising money on the the stock market.
In June, GrokAI owner SpaceX became the world's biggest ever listing as it raised $85.7bn.
Meanwhile, AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI are preparing to go public, with valuations of more $1tn.
Tech firms are blaming AI for mega device and console price rises
World's largest chipmaker does not rule out price rises as costs increase
Demand for SK Hynix's offering was reportedly over seven times more than the number of shares available, highlighting the strong investor appetite for a key company in the AI supply chain.
The bumper appetite effectively means investors were so desperate to buy the shares that the company was able to charge a price 2.9% higher than its current stock price in Seoul, rather than offering a traditional discount.
Each American depositary share is equivalent to a tenth of a Seoul-traded common share, SK Hynix said.
The offering gives US investors a way to buy SK Hynix shares without having to trade via an overseas stock exchange.
The company has pledged major investments to develop South Korea's chip making and AI capabilities in the coming years.
"They're using the money they're raising from this US listing to help build more plants, to develop these high-end chips," Shanti Keleman, co-chief investment officer at Seven Investment Management, told the BBC.
"They're going to be building those plants in Korea and obviously the US has a lot of people willing to invest so it makes sense to go there to raise the money."
However, Hanyang University business professor Yun Youngjin said while South Korea's government was likely to be counting on the move to raise funds for domestic investments, a Nasdaq listing carries some risks, especially if investors move money towards the US and away from South Korea's stock market.
In June, the country's government unveiled plans for more than $880bn of investments in partnership with SK Hynix and Samsung.
Both SK Hynix and Samsung have stock market valuations of more than $1tn, joining a growing group of firms which includes tech giants Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Google-owner Alphabet.
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