SK Hynix Makes a Record-Breaking $26.5B Nasdaq Debut with a 13% Surge
South Korean memory chip giant, SK Hynix, made a triumphant debut on the Nasdaq on Friday, July 10, 2026. The company closed its first day of trading with an impressive 13% increase at $168.01, after opening at $170. This was significantly above the $149 ADR offer price. The listing raised a whopping $26.5 billion, making it the largest U.S. share offering ever completed by a foreign company. This surpassed Alibaba’s landmark $25 billion New York listing in 2014.
The offering comprised of 177.9 million American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). Every 10 ADRs corresponded to one underlying common share. Initially, the trading was under the provisional ticker SKHYV. However, it switched to the permanent ticker SKHY on the following Monday. The investor demand was explosive, with orders reportedly covering seven times the available shares before pricing.
SK Hynix, South Korea’s second-most valuable company behind only Samsung, dominates the global High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chip market with a 56.4% share. HBM chips are critical components in Nvidia’s AI accelerators. The AI boom has driven SK Hynix’s stock up more than sevenfold over the past year, pushing its market cap to roughly $1 trillion.
Chairman Chey Tae-won told CNBC that the demand was “enormous” and “exponential”. He added that even after the company announced plans to double capacity within five years, customers said it still wasn’t enough. The proceeds will fund new manufacturing facilities, including a $4 billion advanced packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Source: CNBC – SK Hynix Rises 13% in Nasdaq Debut