AIBRIEF
The world's largest high bandwidth memory supplier priced above its $149 offer as the year's second largest US share sale tested demand for the AI memory layer.
SK Hynix, the world's largest maker of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, closed its Nasdaq debut on July 10 up roughly 14% after a $26.5 billion American depositary receipt (ADR) offering. The ADRs opened at $170 versus a $149 offer price and were more than seven times oversubscribed, making it the second-largest US share sale of 2026, behind SpaceX's IPO the prior month.
The listing lands SK Hynix on a US exchange just as its shares have pulled back about 25% from a mid-June record. They remain roughly 630% above where they sat a year earlier, when HBM chips became the key memory component inside AI-focused GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. The company has said the proceeds will fund new manufacturing capacity.
Analysts read the demand as confirmation that the AI memory trade is still drawing buyers, with a caveat. Great Hill Capital's Thomas Hayes called global semiconductors "the most crowded trade in the world," while AJ Bell's Dan Coatsworth said US appetite suggests "the memory chip rally might have just taken a breath rather than peaked."
What remains unresolved is whether the first-day premium marks the start of a sustained US rerating or simply prices in a pullback the shares had already absorbed.