SEOUL—SK Hynix shares jumped 15% in a single session on June 24 after the memory maker said it plans to raise 45.45 trillion won, about $29.4 billion, by selling depositary receipts on the Nasdaq. Trading in the securities is expected to begin July 10, the company said.
The deal would be one of the largest equity raises by a South Korean company and the clearest sign yet of how the AI memory boom is reshaping the country’s biggest technology names. SK Hynix controls 57% of the global market for high-bandwidth memory by revenue, the specialized chips that sit beside Nvidia’s AI accelerators in data centers and are the component in shortest supply across the industry.
Investors responded with an unusual burst of enthusiasm. The stock’s single-day surge of 15% came as traders welcomed what they read as a green light for expansion at the top of a historic pricing cycle. Nikkei Asia described the mood among investors, who increasingly treat SK Hynix as the “storage king of the AI era.”
The raise will help fund an expansion that rivals say is already straining the industry’s ability to keep up. HBM production is sold out well into next year, according to analysts, and SK Hynix has been converting conventional DRAM capacity to high-bandwidth lines while adding advanced packaging that stacks memory dies vertically. The company’s newest products stack twelve layers of memory, and each generation increases both bandwidth and the difficulty of manufacturing.
High-bandwidth memory is not a commodity. It is engineered to sit directly beside Nvidia’s accelerators, moving data at speeds that conventional DRAM cannot approach, and it must pass a qualification process with each chipmaker that consumes months. That has created a market where buyers line up years in advance and suppliers name their prices. Analysts estimate that HBM now accounts for a substantial share of the industry’s total memory revenue even though it is a fraction of total volume.
Nvidia is the reason for the shortage. Every AI accelerator the company ships needs memory beside it, and the faster the accelerators get, the more memory each one consumes. With Nvidia’s Blackwell generation in volume production and the Rubin platform set to follow, the memory bill for a single server rack has climbed into the millions of dollars, and SK Hynix is the supplier best positioned to collect it.
The move also deepens SK Hynix’s separation from Samsung Electronics, its larger domestic rival. Samsung has struggled in the premium memory segment, losing ground in HBM qualification with Nvidia while its conventional memory business faces weak pricing. Late last year, SK Hynix overtook Samsung as South Korea’s most valuable listed company, a reversal of an order that had stood for more than a decade.
Listing depositary receipts in New York gives U.S. investors direct access to the stock and could eventually open the door to index inclusion, analysts said. It also diversifies SK Hynix’s shareholder base beyond Seoul, where the shares have been a favorite of retail traders chasing the AI theme. Underwriters will sell the securities in tranches, and the final size could shift with market conditions.
Memory prices are the backdrop to the enthusiasm. DRAM contract prices have climbed for several consecutive quarters, and HBM commands prices several times that of conventional DRAM because supply is tight and qualification is difficult. Micron, the No. 3 producer, reported a record quarter in June, and analysts expect the shortage to persist through the year as every major AI accelerator design consumes more memory per chip.
Some investors caution that the industry’s habit of overshooting is intact. Memory makers have a long record of building capacity into a downturn, and a raise of this size adds to supply that will eventually come to market. “The question is never whether the party is good,” said one fund manager in Seoul. “It is when everyone shows up with more capacity.”
For now, though, the market is betting that AI demand is different from past cycles. High-bandwidth memory is engineered for a specific customer’s chips and sold out years in advance, a structure that gives SK Hynix pricing power that conventional memory makers have rarely enjoyed. The company’s own production lines are running at full tilt, and its customers include every major AI chip designer.
The real test comes after the sale. SK Hynix must convert $29 billion of new equity into capacity and profit before the next downturn arrives. If it succeeds, the ADR listing will be remembered as the moment the memory industry’s center of gravity moved from Seoul’s exchange to New York. If it stumbles, investors will have paid a premium for the privilege of watching.
Either way, the message from the June trading floors was unambiguous. In an industry defined by brutal cycles, SK Hynix has positioned itself as the supplier everyone needs, and it is raising the money to prove it.
