South Korea’s SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in its U.S. stock market debut on July 10, 2026, setting a record for the largest initial public offering by a foreign company in American history and surpassing Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s 2014 offering of $25 billion. The memory chipmaker priced its American depositary receipts at $149 apiece, selling 177.9 million shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker SKHYV (switching to SKHY on July 15), according to Reuters and Bloomberg.
The offering drew extraordinary investor appetite, with demand exceeding available shares by more than seven times, according to Bloomberg. Global investors placed orders worth roughly $171 billion for the listing, highlighting intense competition to gain exposure to a company positioned at the center of the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom.
On its first trading day, SK Hynix shares jumped 13 percent, closing at $168.01, as U.S. investors embraced the opportunity to own a stake in South Korea’s second-most valuable company by market capitalization, trailing only Samsung. The stock opened at $170 but drifted lower during Friday’s session, according to CNBC.
SK Hynix Chairman Chey Tae-won told CNBC that demand for the company’s memory chips has reached unprecedented levels. “The demand is enormous, exponentially, so I don’t really see” signs that demand is shrinking, Tae-won said. He added that when the company announced plans to double its production capacity within five years, customers pushed back, saying the increase still wasn’t enough. “All my customers said that, ‘Well, that’s not enough, man, and, well, we need more,'” Tae-won said.
The surge in demand reflects the AI boom’s effect on memory markets. For decades, computer memory occupied a quiet corner of the semiconductor industry, but the race to build AI infrastructure has transformed it into a massive growth sector. SK Hynix supplies high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, which is essential for AI chips made by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company. The company also serves Apple and other major technology firms, according to CNBC.
SK Hynix’s valuation has risen more than sevenfold over the past year as AI-driven demand has created a global shortage of memory chips and pushed prices higher. The company leads the market in HBM, the specialized memory required for AI accelerators, and holds a 36 percent share of the broader DRAM market, according to sources cited in earlier reporting.
The company plans to deploy a substantial portion of the IPO proceeds to boost manufacturing capacity. Those expansion plans include a $390 billion cluster of chip fabrication plants in Yongin, South Korea, and a $4 billion advanced packaging facility in Indiana, according to reporting from CNBC and the Korea Economic Daily. Tae-won emphasized the permanence of the AI demand shift, arguing that the memory boom differs from past cycles driven by smartphones or cloud computing. “The AI agent, physical AI robot, actually that needs a lot of memory chips,” Tae-won said.
SK Hynix’s record U.S. listing comes about a month after SpaceX’s IPO in June, which raised more overall but was a domestic offering. The SK Hynix debut marks a turning point for foreign companies seeking access to U.S. capital markets and signals investor confidence in the long-term growth of AI infrastructure spending, even as some analysts warn that memory booms have historically proven cyclical and prone to oversupply.
Sources
- Bloomberg — SK Hynix’s record $26.5 billion offering, pricing details, and 7x oversubscription
- Reuters — IPO pricing at $149 per ADR, 177.9 million shares, and oversubscription details
- CNBC — First-day trading performance (13% gain, $168.01 close), Chairman Chey Tae-won quotes on demand, customer feedback, and expansion plans
- The Korea Herald — Foreign IPO record confirmation and Nasdaq offering details
- CNN — Alibaba 2014 IPO precedent ($25 billion) and market context
- Yahoo Finance — 177.9 million ADR sale details and investor composition (long-only funds, tech funds, sovereign wealth funds, Asia-focused investors)
- Korea Economic Daily Global Edition — $390 billion Yongin fab expansion and $4 billion Indiana packaging plant plans
