How SK Hynix just pulled off the second-largest U.S. share sale by quietly powering the AI boom

SK Hynix, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-bandwidth memory, debuted on the Nasdaq yesterday, after raising $26.5 billion in the largest U.S. listing ever by a foreign company and the second-largest share sale in U.S. history, trailing SpaceX’s $86 billion IPO last month. Shares rose 12.8% in their first day of trading.

The listing gives U.S. investors direct access to a chipmaker that’s closely tied to the AI boom, making the specialized memory chips that sit inside almost every Nvidia processor, and now command high prices amid a major shortage.

“We’ve announced plans to double production capacity within five years, but every customer says, ‘That’s still not enough—we need more’,” SK Group Chair Chey Tae-won told CNBC on Friday, the day of the listing.

SK Hynix’s shares, currently traded in Korea, have surged more than 630% over the past 12 months, pushing its market value past $1 trillion, only the second Korean company to hit that milestone after Samsung Electronics. 

Yet SK Hynix, like many other Korean companies, suffers from what’s been called the “Korea Discount,” where shares are traded at a discount compared to global peers—and, at worst, trade below book value. U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology, for example, boasts a $1.1 trillion valuation, despite SK Hynix being significantly more profitable.

Analysts tend to blame the country’s chaebols—the vast family-controlled conglomerates that dominate the economy—for corporate governance practices that prioritize group cohesion over shareholder returns. 

SK executives argue the U.S. listing will attract global investors who cannot easily access the Korean market. Analysts at HSBC estimate that the listing of SK Hynix American depository receipts could lift the chipmaker’s valuation by as much as 20%. 

From bailouts to AI dominance

SK Hynix’s path to a U.S. listing was long and troubled. The company was founded in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics, a division of the larger Hyundai Group. After the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 left the Korean semiconductor sector dangerously overextended, Seoul pressed the industry to consolidate. Hyundai absorbed LG Semiconductor and renamed the merged entity Hynix, a portmanteau of “high” and “electronics.”

The LG merger loaded Hynix with debt. The company required bailouts from both creditors and the Korean government, was spun off by Hyundai in 2003, and spent nearly a decade as an........

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