The South Korean chip maker SK Hynix has raised $26.5bn (£19.8bn) in what is the largest ever stock sale by a foreign company in the United States, riding a wave of investor frenzy over artificial intelligence.
The company, a key supplier of advanced memory chips to Nvidia, sold 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADS) at $149 each, with trading set to begin on the Nasdaq on Friday. The offering was more than seven times oversubscribed, reflecting the intense appetite for a firm at the heart of the AI supply chain.
“SK Hynix raises $26.5bn in record US listing by foreign firm, riding AI boom.”
SK Hynix has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global race to build AI data centres. Its share price has more than tripled in South Korea this year, and its market capitalisation on the Kospi index surpassed $1tn in May. That milestone has also been reached by domestic rival Samsung Electronics and US chip maker Micron, propelling the three firms into an exclusive club of about a dozen $1tn companies.
The listing gives US investors a way to buy SK Hynix shares without trading on an overseas exchange. Jaewon Choi, a finance professor at Seoul National University, said the move provides “easier access to huge amounts of potential investment from the world’s biggest economy, which has fewer barriers than South Korea.” Choi added that traders are watching the listing as a “yardstick to test the water” for whether enthusiasm for memory chip makers will continue.
However, Hanyang University business professor Yun Youngjin cautioned that the Nasdaq listing carries risks, especially if investors shift money away from South Korea’s stock market. The South Korean government, which has unveiled plans for more than $880bn of investments in partnership with SK Hynix and Samsung, is likely counting on the US listing to raise funds for domestic chip-making and AI projects.
SK Hynix’s debut surpasses the $25.6bn raised by Saudi Aramco in 2019 and the $21.8bn by Alibaba in its New York IPO, though it remains far behind the $85.7bn raised by SpaceX in June. The offering is being led by BofA Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, Goldman Sachs (Asia) and JP Morgan Securities.
The company’s ascent has become a cultural phenomenon in South Korea, where an image of its jacket went viral as a symbol of wealth and success. Now, with its shares set to trade on the world’s most prominent tech index, SK Hynix is betting that the AI boom has further to run.