South Korea's SK Hynix raises US$26.5 billion in a Nasdaq debut that is the largest US listing by a foreign company, driven by AI memory demand
South Korea's SK Hynix completed what became the largest US stock listing ever by a foreign company on July 10, raising US$26.5 billion in a Nasdaq debut that saw shares jump 13 percent; the chipmaker, which supplies high-bandwidth memory to Nvidia and Apple, is also under public pressure from US officials to build new fabrication plants on US soil
Add to a list
No lists yet.
Summary
South Korea's SK Hynix completed the largest US stock listing by a foreign company on July 10, raising US$26.5 billion in a Nasdaq debut that saw its shares surge 13 percent. The company, which makes high-bandwidth memory chips used by Nvidia and Apple, has grown to a trillion-dollar market cap on the back of AI compute demand. US officials are now pressing SK Hynix and rival Samsung to open fabrication plants on US soil, adding a geopolitical dimension to what began as a capital markets event.
Why it matters
High-bandwidth memory is a bottleneck for AI model training and inference. SK Hynix and Samsung together supply the overwhelming majority of the world's HBM output, giving South Korea outsized leverage in the AI supply chain. A US listing makes the company more accessible to US institutional investors and raises the stakes on the US fab pressure.
What to watch
- Whether SK Hynix or Samsung commit publicly to US fabrication capacity, and on what timeline
- How the stock performs once initial debut demand settles
- South Korean government response to US pressure on domestic chipmakers to build abroad