South Korean memory-chip giant SK Hynix made a landmark debut on Wall Street on July 10, 2026, raising $26.5 billion through the sale of 177.9 million American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) priced at $149 apiece. This offering marks the largest U.S. IPO ever by a foreign company, surpassing Alibaba’s $25 billion listing in 2014 (apnews.com).
Investor appetite was extraordinary: demand for the ADRs exceeded supply by more than seven times, drawing interest from over 500 investment firms and major institutions such as Baillie Gifford, Coatue Management, and Situational Awareness Partners (tomshardware.com).
The listing reflects the booming demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a critical component in AI accelerators and data-center infrastructure. SK Hynix is a leading supplier of HBM, and the proceeds are earmarked for expanding HBM manufacturing capacity, including new fabs, packaging facilities, and EUV scanner acquisitions (tomshardware.com).
On its first day of trading on Nasdaq, SK Hynix’s ADRs surged between 12.8% and 14% above the offering price, closing around $168–$170, underscoring strong investor confidence in the company’s AI-driven growth trajectory (apnews.com).
This IPO not only sets a new benchmark for foreign listings in the U.S. but also signals robust global capital flows into semiconductor infrastructure, particularly memory technologies underpinning AI and cloud computing. SK Hynix’s successful debut underscores the sector’s strategic importance amid the AI and data-center expansion wave.