South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix isn’t one of the Magnificent 7 stocks but is in a class of its own after pulling off a stunning rally on the back of the AI boom, and it’s about to land on U.S. markets, Fortune’s Jason Ma reports.
The offering will be a crucial test of investors’ desire to keep funding the AI boom. Shares will list on the Nasdaq and are expected to start trading on Friday, raising about $29 billion in what could be the biggest-ever first-time share sale by a foreign company. That’s after SK Hynix’s Korea-listed stock has shot up 770% over the last 12 months, even after a 20% selloff from a peak in June.
The surge even outpaces Micron Technology’s 700% rally over the same time, with makers of memory chips emerging as critical enablers of AI agents. And SK Hynix is the top supplier of high-bandwidth memory after becoming Nvidia’s favorite provider.
South Korean stocks have been on a wild ride this year, with the main exchange, the KOSPI, up 87% year-to-date. That’s because SK Hynix is heavily overrepresented within the KOSPI market cap. Samsung and SK Hynix alone represent about half the entire index.
“Samsung and SK Hynix helped the KOSPI triple over the past year after 17 years of doing nothing, even if some air has escaped from the balloon in recent days. Their combined market cap is still around 16 times that of the third largest company in the index,” Deutsche Bank said in a chartbook published July 3.
