{"slug": "sk-hynix-is-racing-to-list-on-nasdaq-just-as-the-ai-chip-trade-it-built-its-on", "title": "SK Hynix is racing to list on Nasdaq just as the AI chip trade it built its fortune on wobbles", "summary": "SK Hynix plans to list American depositary receipts on the Nasdaq under ticker SKHY around July 10, aiming to raise up to $29.65 billion in the largest ADR offering in over two decades. The listing comes as the company's stock suffered a 14.5% plunge on July 2 amid a broader semiconductor selloff triggered by news that Meta Platforms is building a cloud business to resell excess AI computing capacity, raising concerns about future chip demand. SK Hynix hopes a Nasdaq listing will attract higher valuations from US investors compared to its current forward P/E of around 8 on the Korea Exchange.", "body_md": "*SK Hynix wants to raise up to $29.65 billion in the largest ADR offering in over two decades, but it is trying to price the deal days after its own stock suffered its worst rout of the year.*\n\nSK Hynix confirmed it plans to list American depositary receipts on the Nasdaq under the ticker SKHY around July 10, offering roughly 177.9 million new ADR shares at an expected price near $165.26 each, according to CNBC. At the top of that range, the deal raises about 45.45 trillion won, or close to $29.65 billion, which would eclipse both Alibaba's 2014 US listing and Saudi Aramco's $25.6 billion IPO from 2019. Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are running the books.\n\nThe timing is brutal. On July 2, SK Hynix shares plunged 14.5% as part of a broader semiconductor selloff, dragging Samsung Electronics down 9.1% and pulling South Korea's Kospi index 7.9% lower, its worst session since a 10% drop earlier in June. The trigger, according to reports picked up widely across markets, was news that Meta Platforms is building a cloud business to resell excess AI computing capacity, a move investors read as an early sign that hyperscalers might eventually need less chip capacity than the market has priced in, not more.\n\nThat single data point matters more than it should for a company that spent the last year riding the opposite story. SK Hynix's 2025 revenue hit a record 97.147 trillion won, up nearly 50% from the year before, and the company posted a 72% operating margin in the first quarter of 2026 largely on the back of high bandwidth memory, the stacked chip that sits inside Nvidia's AI GPUs. Through mid-June the stock had climbed roughly 272% for the year. A single Meta headline wiped out weeks of that gain in one session.\n\nWhy list in New York at all, when the Korea Exchange already prices in a supercycle? Because it doesn't price it in enough, by SK Hynix's own logic. The company trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of around 8, well below US chip peers with comparable AI exposure. A Nasdaq listing is a bet that American investors will value the same HBM franchise more richly than Korean ones do, and that the gap is worth the cost and disclosure burden of a cross-border ADR. SK Hynix says the proceeds go toward the first phase of its Yongin Semiconductor Cluster fab, the Cheongju P&T7 advanced packaging plant, and EUV lithography tools, the physical capacity behind the next generation of HBM output.\n\nSK Hynix currently holds an estimated 58% share of the global HBM market, with Nvidia as its most important customer. Samsung Electronics wants a bigger piece of that back. The rival chipmaker has laid out a $650 billion investment plan and is pushing HBM4 samples to catch up on the memory that goes into next-generation AI accelerators. Bank of America projects the HBM market will reach $54.6 billion in 2026, a 58% increase from last year, which is the kind of number that makes the whole sector look underbuilt. It's also the kind of number that stops looking so certain the moment a customer like Meta talks about having computing power to spare.\n\nNone of this means the Nasdaq listing collapses. SK Hynix and its underwriters have priced plenty of deals through worse weeks, and a one-day plunge in Seoul doesn't automatically kill demand for ADRs in New York. But a company asking American investors to pay a richer multiple for its future HBM sales is now doing so with its home market telling a nervier story about that same future. If the debut prices near $165 and trades up, it confirms Wall Street still believes the AI memory cycle has room to run. If it prices light or slips below issue, that will say more about where AI capital spending is actually headed than any earnings call has this year.\n\n**Also read:** [Hackers Just Showed How Fragile the AI Software Supply Chain Really Is](https://startupfortune.com/hackers-just-showed-how-fragile-the-ai-software-supply-chain-really-is/) • [Three nuclear startups beat Trump's deadline and one already powers an Nvidia chip](https://startupfortune.com/three-nuclear-startups-beat-trumps-deadline-and-one-already-powers-an-nvidia-chip/) • [HCLTech beats Infosys to land a $1.14 billion AI deal with Mercedes-Benz](https://startupfortune.com/hcltech-beats-infosys-to-land-a-114-billion-ai-deal-with-mercedes-benz/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sk-hynix-is-racing-to-list-on-nasdaq-just-as-the-ai-chip-trade-it-built-its-on", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/sk-hynix-is-racing-to-list-on-nasdaq-just-as-the-ai-chip-trade-it-built-its-fortune-on-wobbles/", "published_at": "2026-07-04 04:20:31+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-04 04:22:38.650882+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-chips", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["SK Hynix", "Nasdaq", "Nvidia", "Meta Platforms", "Samsung Electronics", "Citigroup", "JPMorgan", "Goldman Sachs"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sk-hynix-is-racing-to-list-on-nasdaq-just-as-the-ai-chip-trade-it-built-its-on", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sk-hynix-is-racing-to-list-on-nasdaq-just-as-the-ai-chip-trade-it-built-its-on.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sk-hynix-is-racing-to-list-on-nasdaq-just-as-the-ai-chip-trade-it-built-its-on.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sk-hynix-is-racing-to-list-on-nasdaq-just-as-the-ai-chip-trade-it-built-its-on.jsonld"}}