Newsletters
South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix is moving ahead with a Nasdaq listing targeting about $28 billion, putting the company on track for what could become the world's second-largest initial public offering as demand for artificial intelligence chips continues to surge.
If completed as planned, the share sale would trail only SpaceX's $75 billion listing while surpassing some of the biggest IPOs on record, including those of Saudi Aramco and Alibaba.
The company has launched an offering of 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADSs), U.S.-traded securities representing ownership in foreign companies, with each ADS equal to one-tenth of a common share, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker "SKHY" once the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission completes its review of the registration statement, the filing showed.
SK Hynix expects to receive about $28 billion in net proceeds, which it plans to use for general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures. The final offering price will be determined through discussions with underwriters and based on the company's Seoul-listed share price before the listing.
On July 3, SK Hynix's common shares closed at 2,425,000 won ($1,581.41) per common share, or $158.14 per ADS, using the exchange rate referenced in the filing.
BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are serving as active book-running managers, while Cantor, Mizuho, Needham & Company, RBC Capital Markets, Rosenblatt, Stifel, Wedbush Securities, William Blair and Wolfe | Nomura Alliance are acting as co-managers.
SK Hynix is riding a wave of booming demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and other chips used in artificial intelligence servers and data centers. That momentum has fueled investor enthusiasm for companies supplying AI infrastructure, with cloud providers and hyperscale data center operators continuing to ramp up spending on advanced memory.
TrendForce, a Taiwan-based semiconductor market research and analytics firm, expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise another 13% to 18% in the third quarter and NAND Flash prices 10% to 15%, as chipmakers prioritize higher-margin HBM and server memory products over consumer applications.
Although supply remains tight, analysts forecast that the industry's aggressive capacity expansion will eventually outpace demand if AI infrastructure spending slows, raising the risk of oversupply and renewed pressure on memory prices later in the cycle.
The strong market backdrop has translated into record financial results for SK Hynix, with the company reporting revenue of 95.7 trillion won ($66 billion) in 2025, up 114.6% from a year earlier, while net profit jumped 170.7% to 53.6 trillion won, according to its SEC filing.
Its stock has climbed 764.6% over the past year, making it one of the biggest contributors to gains in South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index, which has risen 163.2% over the same period.
The IPO also coincides with South Korea's rollout of a more than $1.2 trillion strategy to strengthen its semiconductor and AI industries.
The plan includes more than $576 billion in chip investments, with SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics expected to build four new fabrication plants in the country's southwest while expanding HBM production, advanced packaging capacity and the broader semiconductor ecosystem.
Set as preferred source
Set as preferred source
1 min read
1 min read
