South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix is targeting a $28 billion Nasdaq listing through American depositary receipts, capitalizing on surging global demand for artificial intelligence memory chips.
The offering would rank as the second-largest share sale in history, trailing only SpaceX’s roughly $85.7 billion initial public offering completed last month.
At $28 billion, the SK Hynix listing would surpass Saudi Aramco’s $25.6 billion IPO in 2019 and Alibaba’s similarly-sized debut in 2014, cementing its place among the most significant capital market events on record.
SK Hynix filed a Form F-1 registration statement with the SEC to list American depositary shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker SKHY, with 10 ADRs representing one common share.
The company set a reference price of 242,500 won per ADR, based on the stock’s July 3 close in Seoul, and will sell 17.79 million new shares with proceeds flowing directly to the company.
Investor appetite has been substantial, with Baillie Gifford Overseas, along with funds managed by Coatue Management and Situational Awareness Partners, each separately indicating interest in buying up to a combined $7 billion worth of the ADRs.
SK Hynix adjusted its fundraising target down from an initial $29.4 billion following pre-pricing pressure on its Seoul-listed shares in the days leading up to the offering.
The company’s financial results underscore why investors are paying close attention, with first-quarter 2026 revenue hitting 52.58 trillion won, surging 198% year-over-year, and net profit climbing 398% to set all-time records.
SK Hynix currently holds roughly 57% of the global high-bandwidth memory market and a 32% share of the broader DRAM market, with customers including Nvidia and Alphabet’s Google among its biggest buyers.
The company’s Seoul-listed stock has risen more than 200% this year, pushing its market capitalization past $1 trillion as demand for HBM chips tied to AI infrastructure spending continues to accelerate.
Proceeds from the Nasdaq listing will fund new chip factories in South Korea and the purchase of chipmaking equipment, including an extreme ultraviolet lithography scanner manufactured by ASML.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won stated that to meet the growing demand for memory chips driven by AI computing, SK Hynix plans to expand wafer capacity to three times its current level by 2034, with a doubling of capacity within five years.
The constraint in AI memory right now is not demand but supply, as high-bandwidth memory has been sold out well in advance across the industry, rewarding whichever companies can scale fastest.
For US investors, the arrival of SKHY on the Nasdaq adds a second heavyweight AI memory pure-play to a list previously dominated by Micron on American exchanges.
The listing is also expected to eliminate the long-standing valuation discount applied to Korean-listed equities, potentially making SKHY an immediate candidate for inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 and other major technology indices.
