South Korea’s SK Hynix to launch $28 billion US listing to ride global AI wave

SK Hynix, the South Korean memory giant and the world's leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips critical to AI accelerators, is planning a $28 billion listing on a US exchange. The deal would rank among the largest US IPOs in years and would give American investors direct equity access to the company that supplies HBM3E to Nvidia's flagship GPUs.

The listing matters because SK Hynix currently trades primarily on the Korea Stock Exchange (KRX) under ticker 000660, and US investors seeking pure-play HBM exposure have had to go through ADRs or Korean market access. A US listing at this scale changes that calculus entirely, potentially drawing large passive and active fund inflows.

The bull case centers on timing: HBM demand is structurally outpacing DRAM supply, Nvidia's data center capex cycle remains intact, and a US listing unlocks a much deeper capital pool precisely when AI infrastructure spending is accelerating. A successfully priced deal at $28 billion would signal strong institutional conviction in the HBM supercycle thesis.

The bear case is dilution risk and execution uncertainty. A $28 billion capital raise is enormous — it could pressure the existing KRX shares if the US listing comes at a discount to fair value, and broader memory cycle risks (DRAM pricing volatility, potential inventory corrections in 2025-2026) could weigh on valuation at the time of pricing.

Key things to watch: the confirmed exchange (NYSE vs Nasdaq), the pricing structure (new shares vs secondary), the timeline to listing, and whether Nvidia or other hyperscalers participate as anchor investors. Any indication of anchor commitments would be a significant positive signal for the deal and for HBM sentiment broadly.