Chip giant SK Hynix raises $26.5 billion in blockbuster US share offering
Daniel Howley· Technology Editor
Updated Fri, July 10, 2026 at 2:26 PM GMT+5:30
3 min read
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SK Hynix (000660.KS) has raised $26.5 billion in its Wall Street share offering, marking the biggest first-time listing by a foreign company in the US
The initial public offering (IPO) consists of 177.9 million ADS, also called American depositary receipts, each representing one-tenth of a share of the company’s common stock, or 17.79 million shares. Demand for the US sale was running at seven times the available shares, per reports from Reuters
The South Korean memory chip leader said Thursday that it had sold the ADSs at $149 each ahead of its US public trading debut on Friday. They will trade that day on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SKHYV, before entering regular trading under SKHY beginning Monday
All totaled, the $26.5 billion raised means the SK Hynix debut tops Alibaba’s (BABA, 9988.HK) US IPO, per Bloomberg data
A key supplier to Nvidia, SK Hynix is seeking to build up its manufacturing capacity to keep up with the incredible need for memory and storage chips driven by the global AI build-out
The debut also gives US investors an easier way to get in on the South Korean memory stock bonanza
The company’s South Korea-listed stock, which trades on the Korea Exchange, has skyrocketed 174% over the past six months and 634% in the past year.
Though, as Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre pointed out, memory stocks fell into a bear market on Tuesday
Memory makers are flying high thanks to the seemingly insatiable demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and storage chips, which has created a global shortage impacting everything from data center builders to the consumer electronics industry
Data center servers require storage chips to save and access data needed to run AI models and processes. But AI chips, like Nvidia’s (NVDA) graphics processing units (GPUs), don’t need to access every bit of program or AI model all the time. Doing so would make them slow and inefficient
It would be like trying to remember everything that’s happened in your life when someone asks what you did over the weekend
That’s where HBM comes in. This specialized memory holds the most important data needed to run a piece of software, right next to the processor, enabling superfast performance
Three major companies make HBM and storage: Micron (MU), Samsung (005930.KS), and SK Hynix. And according to SK Hynix’s filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, it’s the latest producer of HBM, capturing 56.4% of the market. All three companies are Nvidia partners
But American investors have limited means to purchase shares of SK Hynix or Samsung
