SK Hynix raises $29 billion on Nasdaq — the largest foreign stock sale in US history

SK Hynix, the South Korean company whose high-bandwidth memory chips run almost every major artificial intelligence workload deployed at scale, is completing a $29 billion listing on the Nasdaq — the largest stock offering ever placed in the United States by a foreign company, surpassing Alibaba’s 2014 record and Saudi Aramco’s secondary sale when they came to American markets.

The demand signal is unambiguous. Institutional orders from global long-only funds, sovereign wealth funds, and Asia-focused investors exceeded the available supply by seven times. At that coverage ratio, the final ADR price of approximately $158 per share came in at the upper end of guidance — a market verdict that investors with a long time horizon believe HBM demand is a structural condition, not a cycle.

What SK Hynix is buying with the money clarifies why the offering was structured at this scale. The $29 billion is earmarked for three concrete projects: a first fabrication plant at the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster south of Seoul, an advanced packaging facility in Cheongju, and the purchase of extreme ultraviolet lithography machines — equipment required for next-generation chip production that neither South Korea nor the United States manufactures. The Yongin groundbreaking is planned before year-end; South Korea’s government designated the cluster a strategic economic zone, cutting permitting timelines and subsidizing utilities on the same model that built Samsung’s foundry cluster in Hwaseong.

The strategic logic is precise, even if execution is not. Nvidia‘s AI GPU roadmap requires HBM3E memory through at least 2028, with HBM4 specifications already under development. SK Hynix currently controls roughly 70% of the HBM market, with Samsung holding the rest after two years of production difficulties. If SK Hynix can bring new capacity online before Samsung fully recovers its HBM yield rates, it enters the next upgrade cycle with a compounding lead.

The critique is equally structured. HBM pricing has sustained SK Hynix’s margins for six consecutive quarters, but semiconductor analysts have noted that pricing normalization typically follows a large capacity investment wave, not precedes it. A company that raises $29 billion at peak valuations and commits it to construction during a potential AI spending correction faces a recognizable trap: capital obligations that cannot be unwound against revenues that can fall faster than concrete sets. The roadshow materials do not address this scenario directly.

For the engineers, assembly workers, and supply-chain partners across South Korea’s semiconductor corridor, the Yongin build represents years of stable contracts. The local economic multiplier of a major fabrication facility — equipment suppliers, chemical firms, logistics networks — is historically larger than the fab itself. South Korea’s government is counting on it.

SK Hynix begins trading as SKHY on the Nasdaq on July 10. The listing will make it the most capitalised Asian semiconductor company listed in New York.

Tags: South Korea, semiconductor, Nasdaq, AI chips, SK Hynix, HBM memory