SK Hynix raises $26.5B in the biggest foreign IPO in US history, is urged to build new US fabs

The AI chip boom just produced its biggest Wall Street moment yet. SK Hynix, a South Korean memory chip giant, said Friday it has raised $26.5 billion (KRW 40 trillion) in its U.S. market debut.

SK Hynix sold 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADRs) at $149 each, structured so U.S. investors can buy in at roughly a tenth of what a full share costs in Seoul. This deal, the largest-ever U.S. debut by a non-American company, topped Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO in 2014.

The company begins trading on the Nasdaq today, Friday, July 10, under the temporary ticker SKHYV. Regular trading opens Monday, July 13, when the ticker officially becomes SKHY. So far, U.S. investors are lapping it up. The stock opened at 14% over its IPO price, and the price was still rising in early trading on Friday.

This even as it priced its U.S. shares at a 2.7% premium to its own three-day average back home in Seoul, according to its Korea Stock Exchange filing. Yet, demand for the offering was reportedly more than seven times the available shares, per media reports.

That’s especially amazing considering Korean companies have long traded at a discount to their global peers. That valuation gap is called the Korea Discount. Investors often cite factors such as complex corporate governance structures, low shareholder returns, regulatory uncertainty, and geopolitical risks related to North Korea to justify why companies from that country don’t command higher share prices.

But SK Hynix clearly isn’t suffering from the Korea Discount and that’s because it makes memory chips, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM). HBM is a key component of AI GPUs processors. And right now, Nvidia relies on SK Hynix as one of its primary suppliers.

Per its filing, the money raised from eager U.S. investors will go to three places: a new fab in South Korea (being built now to address the worldwide shortage of memory cause by AI); a new packaging facility in that country; and EUV scanners, the machines that make next-generation chips possible.

Meanwhile, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stopped by a Micron event Thursday with a message for the broader chip industry, not just for U.S. memory maker Micron (who is one of SK Hynix’s biggest competitors). Lutnick reportedly said he’s already in talks with Samsung (the third major memory maker, worldwide) and SK Hynix about building new factories in the U.S. The idea being not to let South Korea continue to be the country that dominates this important tech.

Micron, naturally, is in. It announced it plans to invest $250 billion in new U.S. manufacturing, a commitment the U.S. memory chip company says will create more than 90,000 jobs and keep leading-edge chip production on American soil.

The timing of Lutnick’s request is notable beyond this U.S. IPO for SK Hynix: Both Korean chipmakers just pledged more than $550 billion for new manufacturing investment in South Korea.