South Korea’s SK Hynix raises $26.5bn in record-breaking US IPO

South Korean semiconductor giant SK Hynix has announced a record-breaking $26.5bn raise ahead of its Wall Street debut, fueled by surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI).

The company said on Friday that it sold 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADS) at $149 each ahead of its listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York. ADS are foreign company shares denominated in US dollars and tradeable on US markets. The offering represents 18 million ordinary shares.

SK Hynix's initial public offering (IPO) is the largest-ever listing by a foreign company in the US, surpassing Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's $25bn IPO in 2014. Globally, it ranks second only to SpaceX's record $85.7bn Nasdaq listing in June.

According to Bloomberg, the offering was more than seven times oversubscribed. Dilin Wu, a research strategist at Pepperstone in Melbourne, said the market reception exceeded "even the most optimistic expectations." "Seven times oversubscribed, about $171bn in orders for a $24-28bn deal, and this happened while the semiconductor sector was actively selling off and the Kospi was in a circuit breaker week," she told Al Jazeera. "I think the SK Hynix ADR pricing says one thing very clearly: 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 in the space."

SK Hynix has posted record profits on the back of massive demand for its advanced memory chips, with net income reaching 40.34 trillion won ($26.6bn) in the first quarter of 2026. Its shares on the South Korean stock exchange have surged about 229% since the start of the year. In May, the company joined the elite trillion-dollar club alongside rivals Samsung Electronics and US-based Micron Technology.

Late last month, SK Hynix and Samsung joined a $1 trillion AI investment initiative announced by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, pledging to invest $518bn with suppliers to build two chipmaking facilities. On Friday, SK Hynix's South Korea-listed shares were up about 0.8%.

Cameron Robertson, a portfolio manager at Platinum Asset Management in Sydney, noted, "Clearly there's huge amounts of capital chasing the AI opportunity. Investors around the world are scrambling to find ways to profit from it. I think what we are seeing is a mix of genuine confidence and speculative activity."

Alex Holmes, regional director for Asia Pacific at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said SK Hynix has benefited from a shift in investor sentiment towards companies in the semiconductor supply chain amid concerns about the sustainability of tech giants' multibillion-dollar AI budgets. The "Magnificent Seven"—Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Tesla—traded at their lowest levels in a decade relative to the S&P 500 this week, according to Morgan Stanley.

"Within tech, the [Magnificent Seven] have underperformed, and growth has instead concentrated in the semiconductor supply chain. In the US that's firms like Micron… In Asia, SK Hynix and Samsung have been big winners," Holmes said.

SK Hynix's stellar run mirrors a broader AI-driven rally in South Korea's stock market, which is up more than 70% in 2026. "Korea has absolutely been swept up in the excitement over the past year—you can see that in the rapid growth in margin lending, the rise in popularity of single stock levered ETFs, and retail participation in the stock market," Robertson added.