SK Hynix raised approximately $26.5 billion [1] in a U.S. initial public offering that attracted strong investor demand this week.
The listings and profit forecasts signal a massive surge in investor appetite for the memory-chip sector, driven by the global expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The Korean memory-chip maker's debut on the Nasdaq marks a significant milestone for foreign companies entering the American market. Some estimates suggest the offering could raise more than $26 billion [2], potentially making it the largest-ever foreign stock listing on a U.S. exchange. While some analysts, including Jim Cramer, suggested the figure could reach $28 billion [3], other reports place the total at $26.5 billion [1].
Concurrent with the IPO, Samsung Electronics projected a sharp recovery in its financial performance. The South Korean conglomerate expects its quarterly profit to surge about 19-fold [4] compared to the same quarter from a year earlier. This projection reflects a rebound in the memory-chip market after a period of turbulence.
"Investor appetite for SK Hynix's IPO heats up while Samsung expects a 19-fold leap in profits over the quarter from a year earlier," Francis Maguire said [4].
The demand for high-performance memory chips has become a central pillar of the tech economy. As companies race to build larger data centers, the capacity and efficiency of memory components have become critical bottlenecks. This environment has allowed both SK Hynix and Samsung to capitalize on pricing power and increased volume.
Jim Cramer said that Samsung is now more profitable than Nvidia [3], highlighting the shift in how the market values the hardware that supports AI processing versus the chips that perform the calculations themselves.
“The offering could raise more than $26 billion, making it the largest-ever foreign stock listing on a U.S. exchange.”
The simultaneous success of SK Hynix's U.S. listing and Samsung's profit projections indicates that the 'AI trade' has moved beyond chip designers to the memory providers. As the industry scales, the ability of South Korean firms to secure capital on U.S. exchanges and realize exponential profit growth suggests a long-term structural shift in the semiconductor supply chain, where memory is no longer a commodity but a strategic asset.
