SK Hynix Lines Up Record ~$28B Nasdaq Listing, the Largest-Ever US IPO by a Foreign Firm

SK Hynix is preparing to list on the Nasdaq on July 10 under the ticker SKHY, in an American depositary receipt (ADR) offering set to raise roughly $28-29 billion — what would be the largest-ever US initial public offering by a foreign company, surpassing the records set by Alibaba and Saudi Aramco.

Riding the memory supercycle

The world's leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — the stacked DRAM that feeds Nvidia's AI accelerators — is tapping US markets at the peak of an AI-driven memory boom. The company plans to issue about 17.79 million new shares, with the indicative price hovering around $158-166 per ADR (one domestic common share splits into 10 ADRs).

The proceeds are earmarked squarely for capacity: roughly ₩31 trillion (~$20B) toward the first fab at the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, ₩19 trillion (~$12B) for the P&T7 advanced-packaging plant in Cheongju, and ₩12 trillion (~$8B) for EUV lithography equipment.

Why it matters

A dual Seoul-Nasdaq presence gives SK Hynix direct access to the deep pool of US capital chasing AI infrastructure, and a dollar-denominated currency for the enormous capex the HBM race now demands. It also plants one of Asia's most strategically important chipmakers firmly on American exchanges — a marker of how central Korean memory has become to the global AI buildout.