South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix has filed to sell nearly 17.8 million shares in a U.S. IPO, with the offering expected to price on Thursday and begin trading on Friday. Based on the company’s recent Seoul closing price, the listing could raise approximately $28 billion, according to Bloomberg, making it one of the largest technology IPOs in recent memory.
The company will offer American depositary receipts, each representing one tenth of a common share, allowing U.S. investors to access the stock without trading on a foreign exchange.
SK Hynix is riding an AI-fuelled surge in memory chip demand that has driven its first-quarter revenues up nearly 200 percent year-on-year and its stock price up approximately 260 percent so far this year. AI systems are exceptionally memory-intensive, and as hyperscalers including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle accelerate construction of AI data centres, demand for high-bandwidth memory, DRAM, and NAND has far outpaced supply, a shortage analysts have dubbed RAMageddon. Apple has cited the crunch as a factor in recent price increases on Mac computers and iPads.
SK Hynix and Samsung have jointly pledged over $550 billion in new manufacturing capacity to address the shortfall, though analysts note the investment carries risk if AI memory requirements shift before those facilities come online.
Wall Street is treating memory chipmakers as the nearest proxy to Nvidia’s AI-driven growth story. U.S. rival Micron has risen nearly 700 percent over the past year to a valuation exceeding $1 trillion on the back of record AI demand.
