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How SK Hynix went from struggling chipmaker to $1 trillion AI giant and why it is coming to Nasdaq
SK Hynix rose from a struggling chipmaker to a $1 trillion AI giant. Its Nasdaq listing comes as demand for HBM memory chips surges.
SK Hynix was once a struggling chipmaker. Today, the South Korean memory-chip maker is the country’s second-most valuable listed company, behind Samsung Electronics. The company’s rise has been closely linked to the AI boom. Demand for advanced memory chips has surged as companies build increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems and data centers.
SK Hynix’s stock has soared. Its share price has risen roughly 13-fold since the start of 2025, pushing its market value to about $1 trillion in May, according to Bloomberg. The company is now looking to expand its presence in the US. On July 10, SK Hynix’s American depositary receipts, or ADRs, are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, giving the company access to a much larger pool of global investors.
How SK Hynix started
SK Hynix’s story began in 1983. Hyundai Group, one of South Korea’s biggest industrial conglomerates, founded Hyundai Electronics Industries.The company was created during South Korea’s push into strategic industries. Semiconductors were becoming increasingly important as the global electronics industry expanded.
Hyundai Electronics initially focused on DRAM chips. DRAM, or dynamic random-access memory, is a type of semiconductor that temporarily stores data that computer processors need to access quickly. The company invested heavily in chip factories and technology. That aggressive investment helped Hyundai Electronics become one of the world’s leading DRAM suppliers by the 1990s.
From success to financial crisis
But rapid expansion also created a major problem. Hyundai Electronics had invested heavily in factories and technology, leaving it with large debts. The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis made the situation much worse. Memory-chip prices fell sharply while the company was already carrying heavy debt.
Hyundai Group was forced to restructure. As part of the overhaul, Hyundai Electronics was renamed Hynix Semiconductor in 2001. Hynix struggled for years after the crisis. The company depended on creditor bailouts for much of the following decade as it tried to survive. Hynix even came close to being sold. In 2002, the company was nearly sold to US chipmaker Micron Technology, but the deal eventually collapsed.
The turning point came with SK Group
A major change came in 2012, South Korea’s SK Group acquired a controlling stake in Hynix from its creditors. SK Group then gave the company a new identity. Hynix Semiconductor was renamed SK Hynix after the acquisition. SK Hynix soon made a crucial bet on a new type of memory. In 2013, the company worked with US chip designer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to introduce the world’s first high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, chip, according to Bloomberg.
HBM was different from traditional memory. The technology stacks several layers of DRAM vertically instead of placing them side by side. That design made the chips much faster. HBM can move data at dramatically higher speeds while using less power, making it particularly useful for demanding computing workloads.
AI changed the memory-chip business
For decades, memory chips were a highly unpredictable business. Prices usually moved up and down depending on demand for products such as computers and other electronics. The industry was also extremely expensive to operate. Building advanced semiconductor factories requires huge amounts of money, while weak chip prices can quickly hurt profits.
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These pressures pushed many competitors out of the market. The memory-chip industry eventually became dominated by three major companies: SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics in South Korea, and Micron Technology in the US. Memory chips are used in many everyday products. They can be found in smartphones, gaming consoles, cars and household appliances. But artificial intelligence has completely changed the economics of the industry. As AI models become larger and more powerful, data centers need much more advanced memory to process huge amounts of information.
This has created a major supply bottleneck. AI companies need increasing amounts of advanced memory, making companies that can produce it extremely valuable. This is where SK Hynix’s early HBM investment has paid off. Its HBM chips have become a key component in the processors used to train and run major AI platforms such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to Bloomberg. SK Hynix has also become Nvidia’s leading HBM supplier. Nvidia is the dominant designer of the processors, commonly called AI accelerators, that power many of today’s biggest AI systems.
SK Hynix dominates HBM
SK Hynix currently leads the global HBM market. It has an estimated 51% share, according to market research firm TrendForce. Samsung Electronics is in second place. Samsung has about 26% of the global HBM market, according to TrendForce.
Micron Technology holds about 23%. That puts the three companies at the center of the global race to supply memory for AI. But SK Hynix cannot take its lead for granted. Samsung and Micron are investing heavily to catch up as demand for AI memory continues to grow.
The next AI memory battle is already underway
All three companies are racing to develop better HBM. The next major battleground is HBM4, the latest generation of high-bandwidth memory. HBM4 offers higher performance and greater capacity than earlier versions. That makes it important for the next generation of AI processors and data centers. Nvidia plans to use HBM4 in its next-generation accelerator, Vera Rubin. The system is expected to power the next wave of AI data centers.
Samsung initially got an early lead in HBM4. It shipped its first commercial HBM4 chips to Nvidia in February, according to Bloomberg. But the race has since tightened. SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron have all qualified their HBM4 chips for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin system and are now in production. Deliveries of the AI system are expected to increase later this year. Bloomberg said deliveries of Vera Rubin are set to ramp up in the second half of 2026.
Why SK Hynix is coming to Nasdaq
SK Hynix’s huge rise has pushed it to seek more international investors. The company plans to list its American depositary receipts on the Nasdaq. An ADR makes it easier for US investors to own a foreign company. An American depositary receipt is a US-traded certificate representing shares of a company based outside the US.
Investors can trade the ADR in US dollars. They do not have to directly buy and sell the company’s shares on its home-country exchange. The Nasdaq listing will give SK Hynix access to a deeper pool of global capital. It also makes the company’s shares easier for international investors to trade.
The company plans to use the money raised from the listing to expand production. Its regulatory filing says the proceeds will help fund new chipmaking plants and the purchase of advanced manufacturing equipment. Some of that equipment is extremely advanced. SK Hynix plans to buy machines including extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, lithography equipment, which is used to manufacture cutting-edge semiconductors.
A massive US listing
Each SK Hynix ADR represents one-tenth of an ordinary share. This structure allows the company’s Korean shares to be represented through securities traded in the US. SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion through the offering. It sold 177.9 million ADRs at $149 each, according to Bloomberg.
The offering represents about 2.5% of SK Hynix’s market value. That gives the company a huge amount of fresh capital for its expansion plans. The listing is also a major milestone for foreign companies entering the US market. Bloomberg reported that SK Hynix’s offering is the biggest-ever US listing by a foreign company.
The Nasdaq move is therefore more than just a new place to trade SK Hynix shares. It reflects how dramatically the company has changed — from a heavily indebted chipmaker that once depended on creditor bailouts to a roughly $1 trillion company at the center of the global AI boom.
SK Hynix’s biggest advantage came from betting early on HBM. The technology it helped pioneer in 2013 has become one of the most important types of memory for modern AI processors. Now the company is trying to turn that lead into long-term growth. Its challenge will be to maintain its HBM leadership as Samsung and Micron pour billions into new factories and compete for the next generation of AI memory.
The Nasdaq listing comes at a crucial moment. With AI driving demand for advanced memory, SK Hynix is using its new global investor base and fresh capital to expand production and strengthen its position in the next phase of the AI boom.
