South Korea's SK Hynix announced on Wednesday that it plans to raise up to 45.45 trillion won — roughly $29.4 billion — by listing American Depositary Receipts on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The company said it expects trading to begin on July 10, though the date remains tentative and subject to change. The final size of the offering could shift after bookbuilding, the standard process by which banks gauge investor demand before setting a price.

What is an ADR and why does it matter?

An American Depositary Receipt, or ADR, is a certificate issued by a US bank that represents shares in a foreign company, allowing American investors to buy into overseas firms without navigating foreign stock exchanges directly. SK Hynix's ADRs will be structured so that ten certificates equal one common share traded on South Korea's Korea Exchange. The company already has a Global Depositary Receipt programme running on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, and the Nasdaq move is the next step in broadening its international investor base beyond domestic Korean markets.

If completed at the top of its indicated price range, the deal would become the largest ADR offering ever recorded, surpassing the $21.8 billion raised by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba during its New York debut in 2014. The capital will come from new share issuance — 17.79 million new shares in total — meaning existing shareholders will face some dilution, but fresh cash will flow directly into the company's operations rather than simply reshuffling existing equity.

The AI boom fuelling the raise

SK Hynix sits at the heart of the global artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout as a dominant supplier of High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM — a type of chip in which memory is stacked in three dimensions to deliver dramatically faster data transfer speeds than conventional DRAM. Every major AI accelerator relies on HBM to function at scale, and SK Hynix is Nvidia's largest memory partner. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said the company already purchases billions of dollars of chips from SK Hynix each year.

“"The ADR listing will expand its investor base, ultimately allowing its true corporate value to be properly evaluated." — SK Hynix regulatory filing”

The company said proceeds will be used to build a chip factory in the city of Yongin, south of Seoul, an advanced packaging facility in Cheongju, and to purchase chipmaking equipment including an Extreme Ultraviolet Scanner — a machine central to producing the most advanced semiconductor nodes. SK Hynix filed confidentially for a US listing back in March, at which point sources cited by Reuters suggested the offering might raise as much as $14 billion. The final figure has grown substantially since then, reflecting both stronger market conditions and surging investor appetite for AI infrastructure plays.

A company transformed by AI demand

SK Hynix's stock has climbed 240% so far this year on the Korea Exchange. In late May, it briefly crossed a market capitalisation of $1 trillion for the first time, overtaking Samsung Electronics to become South Korea's most valuable listed company. Last week the firm also announced a multi-year technology partnership with Nvidia to develop next-generation memory chips for AI data centres, covering supply for Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI supercomputers and Vera CPUs.

“"SK Hynix plans to issue ADRs within 2026, but the details, including the size and timing, have not yet been decided." — SK Hynix company statement”

The July timing would place SK Hynix's US debut during an unusually active stretch for new listings, with OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX all expected to enter public markets in the latter half of 2026. A host of large banks are managing the offering. For international investors watching the semiconductor sector, the listing offers direct exposure — via familiar US market infrastructure — to the company that has arguably benefited most from the AI hardware cycle.

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