SK Hynix raises $26.5bn in its Nasdaq debut

In short: SK Hynix raised $26.5bn by selling shares in its first listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

What happened

SK Hynix, a South Korean maker of memory chips, raised $26.5bn in its Nasdaq debut. The Financial Times said this was the largest US stock market listing by a foreign company.

The company sold American depositary shares, priced at $149 each. American depositary shares are a way for US investors to buy stakes in a non US company, like buying a store receipt that represents the real shares held elsewhere.

Demand was strong. The offering was reported to be seven times oversubscribed, meaning investors asked for about seven times more shares than were available. More than 500 investment firms sought shares, according to people familiar with the deal.

SK Hynix said it will use the money to expand manufacturing. It is building new chip factories in Korea and buying specialised machines from ASML, including extreme ultraviolet lithography scanners, which are tools used to etch very tiny patterns onto chips.

The company has benefited from rising demand tied to AI. SK Hynix is a leading supplier of high bandwidth memory, or HBM, to Nvidia. HBM is a type of memory designed to move large amounts of data quickly, which matters for AI systems that process huge files and many calculations at once.

Why it matters

AI services run on large data centers, and those centers need lots of fast memory chips. When companies like SK Hynix raise large sums to build more capacity, it can shape supply, prices, and how quickly AI products can scale.

Source: Financial Times