South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix is initiating one of the largest share sales in Wall Street history, with plans to raise up to $29.4 billion through a new listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
The world’s second largest memory chipmaker plans to raise around $29 billion on the Nasdaq by issuing American depositary receipts, according to the firm’s regulatory filing, with trading expected to begin on July 10. If the deal prices at the top of its range, it would rank second only to SpaceX’s $85.7 billion raise earlier in June 2026, beating both Alibaba and Saudi Aramco on the U.S. IPO leaderboard.
This deserves attention because SK Hynix is not just another chip company; It is the firm quietly making Nvidia’s most advanced AI processors possible, and the size of this raise says a lot about how much money is being poured into the AI memory business right now.
What SK Hynix Actually Does for Nvidia
SK Hynix builds high bandwidth memory (HBM), the fast and expensive form of RAM that sits right next to the processing cores on advanced AI chips. SK Hynix produces more than half of the world’s HBM memory, the fast, pricey RAM that AI chips use to store data, and Nvidia’s flagship Rubin graphics card ships with eight HBM memory modules surrounding its logic circuits. Without a steady supply of this memory, Nvidia cannot build the AI servers that companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta are racing to buy.
The business has turned extremely profitable. The company’s revenue jumped 198% year over year in the first quarter to $38 billion, with a net margin of 77%. SK Hynix passed Samsung this year to become South Korea’s most valuable company, with shares up sharply in 2026 and a market capitalization above $1 trillion.
Why the Company Wants a U.S. Listing
Until now, investors outside South Korea could not buy SK Hynix stock directly. The Nasdaq listing changes that by opening the shares to American and European investors through ordinary brokerage accounts. HSBC analysts expect the listing to lift SK Hynix’s price to book ratio from 2.8 to 3.4, a move that could help narrow the valuation gap with U.S. rival Micron, which has traded at a lasting premium thanks to better access to U.S. investors.
Where the $29.4 Billion Is Going
The offering covers up to 17.79 million shares, about 2.5% of the company’s outstanding stock, with BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan serving as underwriters. The money is not going to sit in a bank account. Proceeds are earmarked for Phase 1 of the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster wafer plant, the Cheongju packaging facility, and EUV lithography equipment needed to expand HBM output, which is already sold out through at least 2027. The company is also funding a $4 billion packaging plant in Indiana, its first manufacturing site in the United States.
What Comes Next
SK Hynix will report second quarter earnings on July 29, just three weeks after the proposed Nasdaq debut, with revenue expected to reach roughly 82.46 trillion won, up from 52.58 trillion won in the first quarter. This timing gives investors an early read on whether the AI memory boom and the company quietly powering so much of Nvidia’s hardware still has room to compete.
