SK Hynix started trading on the Nasdaq today, July 10, under the ticker SKHY. The company raised around $28 billion, making this the largest US stock listing ever by a foreign company. Investor demand was strong enough that the offering was reportedly seven times oversubscribed before it even priced.
Most business professionals outside the tech industry have never heard of SK Hynix. But they almost certainly use its products. The company, founded in South Korea in 1983, makes the memory chips inside laptops, phones, and AI servers sold by Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and dozens of others. It is the world's second-largest memory maker overall, behind Samsung.
Where SK Hynix has pulled ahead of everyone is in one specific product: high-bandwidth memory, the type of chip that AI data centers cannot function without. Think of it as the short-term storage inside an AI server, the component that feeds data to the processor fast enough to keep it running at full speed. SK Hynix holds around 60% of that global market. Nvidia, the dominant AI chip designer, sources roughly 70% of its high-bandwidth memory from SK Hynix alone.
That position has been enormously profitable. Annual revenue nearly tripled from 2023 to 2025, reaching about $65 billion. Analysts polled by financial data firm LSEG expect revenue to more than triple again in 2026, to around $235 billion. The stock price has risen more than 200% this year on the Seoul stock exchange, and the company's total market value has crossed $1 trillion.
The Nasdaq listing serves two purposes. First, it raises cash for new factories. The $28 billion goes toward expanding production plants in South Korea and building a $4 billion facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, which will be the first memory chip packaging plant of its kind on US soil. The Indiana plant is expected to begin production in 2028 and create around 1,000 jobs. It received $458 million in federal funding under the US CHIPS and Science Act. Second, the listing gives SK Hynix access to the world's deepest pool of investors, which should gradually close the valuation gap between the company and its smaller US rival, Micron.
There is a side effect of this AI memory boom that matters directly to businesses that buy equipment. The same three companies that control over 95% of global memory production, SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, have shifted most of their factory capacity toward high-margin AI chips. That has left less standard memory available for consumer electronics. PC prices from brands like Dell and Lenovo are expected to rise 15 to 20% in 2026. Apple has already raised prices on MacBooks and iPads. Smartphone prices are heading toward a record average of $523 this year, up 14%. If your company replaces computers or phones on a regular cycle, expect those budgets to stretch further than usual.
Analysts also point to a real risk on the other side. The memory industry has a long history of booms followed by steep crashes. Just three years ago, SK Hynix and Micron both lost money when a demand slump caused memory prices to collapse. The current boom is driven by genuine AI infrastructure spending, but some analysts warn that prices could enter a correction phase after 2026 as more production capacity comes online. The company is spending aggressively at exactly the moment when its products are at peak demand. That is either the right call or an expensive one, depending on how long the AI spending cycle holds.