SK Hynix just pulled off something no foreign company has done before. The South Korean memory chip giant raised $26.5B in its American Depositary Receipt listing on the Nasdaq, making it the largest US debut by a non-domestic company in history, eclipsing Alibaba’s previous record.
The shares, which priced at $149 per ADR, closed their first trading day on July 10 at $168.01, a 13% pop. The offering was oversubscribed by more than seven times.
Why this matters beyond traditional markets
SK Hynix is one of the world’s dominant producers of high-bandwidth memory, the specialized chips that power the AI training clusters built by Nvidia and its customers.
The listing represents roughly 2.5% of SK Hynix’s outstanding equity.
