South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix began trading on the Nasdaq on July 10, in what became the largest U.S. share sale ever completed by a non-American company. The stock opened at $168.01, roughly 13% above its $149 offer price, giving the company an initial market capitalization of more than $1 trillion.
The offering raised approximately $26.5 billion, surpassing Alibaba’s $25 billion U.S. debut in 2014. SK Hynix priced 177.9 million American depositary receipts, with demand during the bookbuilding process reportedly covering seven times the number of shares on offer, according to reporting from CNBC and Yahoo Finance.
Trading opened Friday under the temporary ticker SKHYV, converting to the permanent symbol SKHY the following Monday. SK Hynix marked the occasion with an opening-bell ceremony at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square, attended by SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung.
“I’d like to thank our investors and customers for their trust and support,” Kwak said in a statement posted to the company’s newsroom. “Through continuous innovation, we will push the boundaries of what memory can achieve while empowering our employees to reach even greater accomplishments. SK hynix seeks to be wherever AI is, continually demonstrating our technology leadership.”
Betting on AI memory demand
SK Hynix controls more than half of the global market for high bandwidth memory, or HBM — the specialized chips that feed data to AI accelerators and have been a key bottleneck in the AI buildout. Surging demand has kept memory prices elevated through 2026, fueling investor appetite for the listing.
According to the company, proceeds will fund new fabrication capacity in South Korea and roughly 11.9 trillion won (about $8.6 billion) in extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment through 2027, as SK Hynix races to keep pace with orders from AI chip designers. The Nasdaq listing runs alongside SK Hynix’s existing shares on Korea’s KOSPI exchange, which were scheduled to resume trading July 29 after a temporary halt tied to the ADR offering.