SK Hynix raises $26.5 billion（約4.2兆円） in second-largest U.S. share sale ever

SK Hynix's path to dominance was neither quick nor certain. Founded in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics, the company absorbed LG Semiconductor after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis forced Korean semiconductor consolidation. The merged entity, renamed Hynix, carried heavy debt and required government and creditor bailouts before being spun off by Hyundai in 2003 and eventually acquired by SK Group in 2012. The foundation for the company's later boom came in 2013, when SK Hynix co-developed the world's first high-bandwidth memory chip with AMD—a niche product at the time that few competitors pursued. When the AI boom arrived and processor makers discovered they needed HBM to train large language models at scale, SK Hynix had accumulated a decade-long lead over Samsung and Micron, positioning it to capture roughly 60% of the emerging global market.

The U.S. listing addresses a long-standing penalty Korean companies face in global markets. SK Hynix, like Samsung Electronics, has historically been valued at a discount to foreign peers—sometimes trading even below book value—due to investor concerns about chaebols' corporate governance practices and prioritization of group cohesion over shareholder returns. Despite being significantly more profitable than U.S. chipmaker Micron, SK Hynix's market capitalization of just over $1 trillion（約160兆円） lagged Micron's $1.1 trillion（約180兆円） valuation. SK executives argue the Nasdaq listing will attract global investors who cannot easily access the Korean market, and analysts at HSBC estimate it could lift the chipmaker's valuation by as much as 20%. Domestically, SK Hynix has also become a symbol of the AI boom's outsized effect on Korea's economy and society: the company controls more than half of the KOSPI index's market capitalization (together with Samsung), and chip workers have seen their social status and earning power surge, with SK Hynix employees now commanding premium bonuses tied to operating profits.