SK Hynix Hits $1 Trillion Valuation in Record Wall Street Debut as AI Memory Demand Soars
SK Hynix, one of the world's largest memory chip suppliers, made a historic debut on Wall Street Friday, raising $26.5 billion in what became the largest foreign company listing ever, surpassing Alibaba's previous record.
The South Korean chipmaker opened at $170 per share and briefly overtook Samsung as South Korea's most valuable company, having already reached a $1 trillion valuation in May. SK Hynix is one of just three major companies—alongside Samsung and Micron—positioned to benefit from the unprecedented surge in demand for DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips.
These memory components have become essential infrastructure for the ongoing AI buildout, as data centers require massive amounts of high-speed memory to power large language models and other AI workloads. HBM, in particular, has emerged as a critical technology for GPU performance in AI training and inference applications.
The successful listing underscores how the AI boom is reshaping the semiconductor industry, with memory suppliers seeing their valuations soar as cloud providers and tech giants race to secure chips for AI infrastructure.