[비즈한국] SK Hynix has successfully established itself on the Nasdaq, the heart of the U.S. financial market. On its first day of listing, the stock saw a massive influx of funds from global investors, soaring more than 13% above its offering price. With this listing, SK Hynix has raised approximately 40 trillion won, securing powerful capital "ammo" to gain a definitive edge in the global AI semiconductor hegemony race.
Listed in the form of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the U.S. Nasdaq market on the 10th (local time), SK Hynix finished its first day of trading at $168.01, up 13.08% from the offering price of $149 per share. The stock, which began trading at $170, had a spectacular debut, soaring to as high as $177 during the session. Trading was conducted under the temporary ticker symbol "SKHYV," and it is scheduled to transition to the official ticker "SKHY" starting on the 13th for regular trading.
The total amount of capital raised by SK Hynix through this Nasdaq listing is $26.5 billion (approximately 40 trillion won). This represents the second-largest equity offering in the U.S. market this year, following SpaceX ($85.7 billion) which listed a month ago, and is the largest ever for a foreign company listing in the U.S. Based on the closing price, SK Hynix's market capitalization roughly reaches $1.2 trillion. This figure surpasses the market cap of Micron, a leading U.S. memory semiconductor company.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won shared his thoughts during an interview with the U.S. economic channel CNBC to commemorate the listing. Chairman Chey remarked, "The dream I had 15 years ago when we acquired Hynix has now become a reality," and evaluated this Nasdaq listing as a "truly historic moment." In particular, he refuted the "peak cycle" theory regarding the semiconductor boom recently raised in some market segments. "We are living in the age of AI," Chairman Chey said. "Because AI agents and physical AI robots permanently require an unimaginable amount of memory chips, we have entered a permanent transformation that is fundamentally different from the previous cycles of boom and bust."
Chairman Chey explained the exponentially increasing demand from customers based on the atmosphere in the field. "Every time I meet with customers and partners, everyone wants more chips," he said. "Even when SK Hynix announced that it would double production capacity within five years, customers still asked for more, saying it wasn't enough." Regarding concerns that major big-tech companies like Nvidia might reduce their use of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), he asserted, "There are absolutely no signs that demand is decreasing; we are only flooded with requests to expand production volumes for this year and next."
During the interview, Chairman Chey also presented a blueprint for additional investments in the U.S. and the utilization of global capital. He stated, "Large-scale investments of at least tens of billions of dollars will be made in the near future across various forms of AI business, including AI, AI data centers, related technologies, and joint ventures with partners."
Wall Street and local media showed high interest in SK Hynix’s successful Nasdaq debut. Bloomberg analyzed the listing as "proof that AI-driven chip demand is structurally robust and a massive market bet testing whether AI can change the long-standing cyclical nature of the memory industry." The Wall Street Journal also highlighted that the offering was the second largest in U.S. equity history, reporting that it marks a significant milestone as global investor interest expands beyond Nvidia to the broader semiconductor infrastructure.
Dan Coatsworth, an investment analyst at AJ Bell, told Reuters, "U.S. demand was stronger than some in the market expected," suggesting that "this indicates the memory semiconductor uptrend is not peaking but is in a consolidation phase." Yahoo Finance identified the biggest achievement of this listing as the fact that global mega-capital, which previously hesitated to invest due to the complex procedures of the Korean market, can now invest directly in the world’s largest HBM company in their own backyard using dollars.