SK hynix jumps on Wall Street after record $26.5 billion US listing
What's new: The South Korean chipmaker topped Alibaba's foreign IPO record as investors piled into an AI-linked semiconductor play.
SK hynix shares surged in their Wall Street debut Friday after the South Korean chipmaker raised $26.5 billion in the biggest US listing by a foreign company. The deal surpassed Alibaba's $21.8 billion New York IPO and highlighted strong demand for companies tied to the artificial intelligence buildout. Founded in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics, SK hynix survived a near-bankruptcy in 2001, spent years under creditor control and was acquired by SK Group in 2012. Its turnaround accelerated after it focused on high-bandwidth memory chips, a technology now central to AI computing. The company later overtook Samsung as the world's top DRAM maker in 2025.