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SK Hynix sets terms for $28.1 billion Nasdaq uplisting, putting $1.2 trillion market cap on the table

· by Pondero Newsdesk

The short version

SK Hynix opened its Nasdaq ADS roadshow on July 6, offering 177.9 million shares at $158.14 per ADS to raise $28.1 billion, with three cornerstone investors already committing $7 billion.

SK Hynix sets terms for $28.1 billion Nasdaq uplisting, putting $1.2 trillion market cap on the table

SK Hynix announced terms for a $28.1 billion Nasdaq ADS offering on July 6, with pricing set for the week of July 6 and trading expected to begin July 10 under the ticker SKHY. The raise would be the largest US public offering by a foreign-listed company on record, per reporting on the deal.

What

SK Hynix, already listed on the KRX KOSPI in South Korea under symbol "000660," launched a Nasdaq uplisting roadshow offering 177.9 million American Depositary Shares at $158.14 per ADS, per Renaissance Capital. That price was pegged to the July 3 close of the company's Seoul-listed shares, converted at 1,533.44 Korean won per US dollar. At the proposed price, SK Hynix would carry a market cap of $1.2 trillion.

Three cornerstone investors, Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited, Coatue Management, and Situational Awareness Partners, have together indicated interest in buying up to $7 billion of the ADS, representing roughly 24.9% of the deal, per IPOScoop. Global lead coordinators on the deal are BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan. The company reported $84.9 billion in revenue for the 12 months ended March 31, 2026, per Renaissance Capital.

Why it matters

SK Hynix ranked first or second globally in DRAM, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and NAND flash markets in Q1 2026, per Renaissance Capital's filing summary. HBM is the memory type that stacks inside Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs and Google TPUs, the chips that run AI training and inference at scale. A Nasdaq listing at $1.2 trillion market cap brings the company's stock directly into the portfolios of US institutional funds that track large-cap benchmarks, including funds that currently cannot hold Korean-listed shares. The three cornerstone commitments totaling $7 billion signal early institutional conviction before retail access opens.

For AI infrastructure buyers and operators, this matters for one practical reason: SK Hynix's stated use of all proceeds is AI memory infrastructure expansion. The size of the raise reflects how much capital is flowing into the physical layer of the AI stack. Whether that capital translates into faster HBM supply growth or just a richer balance sheet is a question the company's capital allocation plans, which have not been detailed in the public term sheet, will eventually answer.

Context

The $28.1 billion raise accounts for a significant portion of the $114.7 billion in total US IPO proceeds raised year-to-date in 2026, per Renaissance Capital's YTD market stats. SK Hynix was founded in 1983 and manufactures DRAM and NAND flash products used across data center servers, graphics cards, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. The company's Korea listing has been public for decades; the Nasdaq offering is a parallel listing that gives US investors direct equity exposure without holding Korean depositary receipts.

What to watch next

Final pricing was expected by July 9. Watch whether SKHY opens above or below the $158.14 ADS reference price on its first day of Nasdaq trading, and whether the company follows the roadshow with a detailed capital allocation plan specifying how AI memory expansion spending breaks down between HBM and NAND capacity.

Sources