On June 24, the world’s second largest memory chip manufacturerSK HynixSubmit regulatory documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and plan to list via Nasdaq ADRRaised 45.45 trillion won (approximately US$29.4 billion). If it goes public on July 10 as planned, it will be one of the world's largest stock offerings after Saudi Aramco's record-breaking IPO in 2019.
The market crowning of the king of AI storage
SK hynix isHBM (High Bandwidth Memory)The absolute overlord in the field. This high-speed memory chip specially designed for AI training and inference is the core supporting component of NVIDIA H200/B200 GPU and Google TPU. As the global AI data center construction frenzy continues, HBM demand has skyrocketed - SK Hynix's stock price has risen more than 200% in the past year, and officially surpassed Samsung Electronics on June 23 to becomeSouth Korea’s most valuable company.
The core purpose of this listing in the United States is very clear:repricing. The management of SK Hynix bluntly stated that the purpose of choosing the world's largest capital market is to obtain a more accurate valuation of the company's status as a "key supplier of AI infrastructure" - it is no longer just a Korean semiconductor company, butThe price setter of the global AI computing power supply chain.
A $29 billion plan
According to the document, SK Hynix plans to issue 17.9 million new shares and the listing venue will be Nasdaq. This money will mainly be used forExpanding HBM’s advanced packaging capabilities——Currently, SK Hynix’s factories in Cheongju and Icheon, South Korea, are operating at full capacity. The demand for HBM3E and next-generation HBM4 from American AI customers (NVIDIA, Google, etc.) far exceeds the supply.
For comparison: SK Hynix’s full-year capital expenditure in 2025 will be approximately US$15 billion, and this IPO fundraising is close to the total of its two-year capital expenditure. This confirms the popularity of the AI storage market from the side.
What does it mean for the AI industry?
The listing of SK Hynix in the United States is a landmark event that brings the AI supply chain from behind the scenes to the front. In the past two years, NVIDIA has been the protagonist of the AI chip narrative, butWithout HBM, there is no large model training——This fact is being repriced by the capital market.
- AI infrastructure investment chain lengthens: From GPU to storage to power to cooling, each link is becoming an independent big track.
- Korean technology companies accelerate “de-Koreanization”: After SK Hynix, the market generally expects that Samsung’s AI-related businesses may also seek spin-off and listing.
- Reshaping the global storage landscape: Micron also hit a record high in stock price in June, and the "Three Kingdoms Killing" of AI storage is entering the capital race stage.
Summary: AI’s “shovel sellers” are becoming the protagonist
The essence of SK Hynix’s US$29 billion IPO is that the market is using real money to confirm a fact:In the second half of the AI revolution, the value of infrastructure will not be less than the model itself. For ordinary investors, this may be more certain than betting on a specific AI model - no matter which GPT-5.6 or Gemini 3.5 Pro is released first, the GPUs used to train them are equipped with SK Hynix's HBM.
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