SK Hynix's $26.5B Nasdaq debut is a reminder that AI startups are paying a memory tax they can't avoid — TFN

SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in the largest first-time US listing by a foreign company.

Conventional DRAM contract prices rose roughly 93% to 98% quarter over quarter in Q1 2026.

AI infrastructure funding reached $12.53 billion across just 27 disclosed rounds in the past year.

SK Hynix began trading on the Nasdaq on July 10 after raising $26.5 billion, the largest first-time US listing by a foreign company. The number that should worry AI founders more than the listing itself: the chipmaker holds 56.4% of the global high-bandwidth memory market, and that market is sold out for the rest of the year.

Tech Funding News has already covered how GPU scarcity is squeezing early-stage AI startups. The memory shortage compounds that problem rather than replacing it. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron control more than 95% of global DRAM output, and all three have been reallocating wafer capacity away from general-purpose memory toward HBM, the specialised chips that sit beside AI accelerators, because HBM commands two to three times the margin of standard DDR5.