SK Hynix Shatters Wall Street Records with $26.5 Billion Public Debut

SK Hynix, the South Korean memory chip giant and key supplier to Nvidia, stormed onto Wall Street on Friday with a historic public offering that raised $26.5 billion. Shares opened at $170 each, catapulting the company past Alibaba's previous record for the largest debut by a foreign firm. The Associated Press and CNN confirmed the milestone, which underscores how deeply the AI boom is reshaping global markets.

The company's valuation briefly topped $1 trillion in May, allowing it to nudge past Samsung as South Korea's most valuable public company. SK Hynix is one of just three major players - alongside Samsung and Micron - riding a surge in demand for DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM). These chips are essential for AI data centers powering models from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. HBM, in particular, is packaged directly into Nvidia's premium chips like the Blackwell Ultra.

As of June, SK Hynix controlled 29 percent of the global DRAM market, trailing Samsung's 38 percent and ahead of Micron's 22 percent, according to Counterpoint data. Yet even the three giants can't keep pace with demand. They're prioritizing high-paying AI customers, leaving device makers for phones, computers, and consoles scrambling. SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won told Bloomberg in June that the company plans to expand memory chip capacity over the next five years, warning the shortage could persist until 2030.

Source: The Verge