SK Hynix raises $26.5bn in record US share sale
SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory-chip maker, raised $26.5bn through a US share sale, which it and its bankers describe as the biggest listing by a foreign company on record. The shares are due to start trading on the Nasdaq, giving the South Korean firm a dollar-denominated equity base and a higher profile with American investors.
The scale of the raise reflects where demand for memory now sits. SK Hynix is the leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked DRAM that pairs with Nvidia’s accelerators in AI data centers, and that business has become the industry’s fastest-growing and most profitable segment. A listing of this size lets the company fund the capacity expansion and capital spending that AI-driven demand requires while tapping the deepest pool of investors chasing the buildout.
For the wider market, a foreign chipmaker choosing a marquee US listing underscores how much of the AI supply chain’s financing is now routed through American exchanges — and how central Korean memory suppliers have become to it.