SK Hynix jumps 13% in $26.5B Nasdaq debut, tops $1T cap
TL;DR
- SK Hynix priced US ADS at a 2.7% premium to its Seoul listing, breaking the Korea Discount and validating HBM as structurally distinct from commodity DRAM.
- Orders totaled $171 billion against $26.5 billion available, a 7x oversubscription ratio at the largest scale of any US IPO in this cycle.
- CEO Kwak told Reuters 2027 will be the worst-ever year for memory supply, with AI demand forecast to outstrip capacity past 2030.
A Korean memory maker just walked onto Nasdaq and closed the day worth a trillion dollars. SK Hynix's American depositary shares priced at $149, opened at $170, and closed up roughly 13% at $168.01 on Friday, according to Forbes. The $26.5 billion raise is the largest US listing ever by a foreign company, and the offering was reportedly about seven times oversubscribed.
The reason this matters more than a typical IPO pop is who SK Hynix is in the AI stack. The company supplies the high-bandwidth memory sitting inside every Nvidia H100, H200, and Blackwell GPU, which means the trillion-dollar market cap is US public investors pricing in that HBM supply stays tight for the foreseeable future. Chairman Chey Tae-won told CNBC that 'the demand is enormous, exponentially,' and that customers keep asking for more even after SK Hynix said it would double capacity within five years.
For everyone else in memory, the read-through is uncomfortable. SK Hynix now sits at a $1 trillion market value, second in South Korea only to Samsung at $1.2 trillion, with fresh dollar-denominated capital to spend on fabs at exactly the moment Samsung and Micron are trying to close the HBM gap. A US listing also gives American institutions and retail a direct AI-memory proxy that previously meant working through a Seoul brokerage.
The honest caveat is that the whole thesis rides on the AI capex cycle continuing at its current pace. If hyperscaler orders soften, that capacity doubling starts to look expensive, and a seven-times oversubscribed book can unwind quickly once early holders take profits. What the reporting doesn't give you is how SK Hynix intends to spend the $26.5 billion, the lockup terms for insiders, or whether HBM allocations to Nvidia are contractually locked and at what pricing.
The forward-looking piece is who benefits. SK Hynix gets hard-currency firepower for capex, US investors get the cleanest listed HBM exposure, and Nvidia gets a supplier newly incentivized to sprint on capacity. Take the trillion-dollar close as a market vote of confidence rather than a settled valuation.
What others are reporting
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Reuters Read →
CEO Kwak spoke to Reuters on debut day forecasting a historic 2027 supply crunch and confirming Nvidia will remain SK Hynix's largest customer past 2030.
'next year will be the worst year in the industry's history from the supply perspective'
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TechCrunch Read →
Leads on Commerce Secretary Lutnick's active fab-construction negotiations and the Korea Discount reversal: US ADS priced at a 2.7% premium to Seoul.
The AI chip boom just produced its biggest Wall Street moment yet.
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Al Jazeera Read →
Quantifies $171 billion in total orders and frames the 7x oversubscription as a rotation out of Magnificent Seven names into semiconductor supply-chain plays.
the AI memory cycle is real, the earnings are real, and global capital has simply never had easy access to the best pure memory play
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Yahoo Finance Read →
Contextualizes the listing against memory's historical boom-bust cycles and negative gross margins, arguing 56.4% HBM share makes this structurally different from prior DRAM rallies.
Memory makers are flying high thanks to the seemingly insatiable demand for high-bandwidth memory and storage chips.
Originally reported by forbes.com
Read the original article →Original headline: SK Hynix Closes Up 13% at $168.01 in Nasdaq Debut, Hits $1 Trillion Market Cap — Largest US IPO Ever by a Foreign Company Raises $26.5B, Chairman Tells CNBC 'Demand Is Enormous' as AI Memory Boom Powers Third-Largest US Debut on Record