SK Hynix stock switched to the SKHY ticker on July 13, 2026, as the South Korean memory chipmaker entered regular trading on the Nasdaq following a record-breaking debut that saw the stock surge 13% on its first day and raise $26.5 billion in the largest foreign IPO in U.S. history.
The stock traded under the temporary when-issued symbol SKHYV on July 10 before the official transition to SKHY took effect Monday, according to a Nasdaq Trader alert. The company priced its American Depositary Receipts at $149 each on July 9, closing the first trading day at $168.01, a jump that underscored investor appetite for the world’s leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory used in AI chips.
SK Hynix Chairman Chey Tae-won told CNBC that “the demand is enormous, exponentially,” reflecting the company’s confidence in the AI-driven memory boom. He noted that even after announcing plans to double its memory chip capacity over the next five years, customers told the company the expansion wouldn’t be enough to meet their needs. “All my customers said that, ‘Well, that’s not enough, man, and, well, we need more,'” Tae-won said on Friday.
The $26.5 billion raised will fund aggressive expansion, including a $4 billion advanced packaging plant in Indiana and a $390 billion cluster of chip fabrication plants in Yongin, South Korea. The company plans to triple its memory chip production capacity by around 2034 to address what executives expect will be persistent supply constraints driven by artificial intelligence infrastructure growth.
SK Hynix trails only Samsung by market capitalization in South Korea and supplies memory chips to major technology firms including Nvidia and Apple. The company’s listing comes roughly a month after SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history, raising $75 billion in June 2026. According to Renaissance Capital’s IPO tracker, SK Hynix’s $26.5 billion offering ranks second in U.S. IPO history, surpassed only by SpaceX.
The memory chip market has transformed from a cyclical backwater into a critical bottleneck for AI expansion. Reuters reported in August 2025 that SK Hynix expects the AI memory market to grow 30% annually through 2030, while the company’s chairman has warned that memory shortages will persist until at least 2030 despite the planned capacity increases. The company had already sold out its entire 2026 production capacity for DRAM, NAND flash, and high-bandwidth memory products before the IPO.
Sources
- Nasdaq Trader — Official notification that SK Hynix ticker switches from SKHYV to SKHY effective July 13, 2026, with settlement date for when-issued trades on July 14
- CNBC — Chairman Chey Tae-won quote on demand, first-day trading details ($168.01 close, 13% gain), $149 pricing, $26.5 billion raised, $4 billion Indiana plant, $390 billion Yongin expansion, customer names (Nvidia, Apple)
- Bloomberg — SK Hynix plans to double memory chip capacity over five years; expects supply constraints to ease memory chip crunch
- Reuters — SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion at $149 per ADR; AI memory market expected to grow 30% annually through 2030
- Financial Times — SK Hynix completed largest U.S. IPO by a foreign company; SpaceX raised $75 billion in largest IPO in history
- Renaissance Capital — SK Hynix ranks second in largest U.S. IPOs, behind SpaceX (2026) and ahead of Alibaba (2014)
