SK Hynix Plans U.S. IPO to Raise $29.4B as Micron's Blowout Earnings Jointly Confirm Memory Super Cycle
Miles Bennett
SK Hynix plans a Nasdaq ADR listing that could raise $29.4 billion, rivaling Saudi Aramco's record IPO; Micron's revenue jumped 346% in the same period — together, the two signals reinforce the market's conviction that the memory super-cycle is far from over.
How big is this IPO?
SK Hynix will issue American depositary receipts (ADRs) on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, targeting ₩45.45 trillion (~$29.4 billion). Trading is expected to begin July 10 under the ticker SKHY.
This means → the deal would rank among the largest equity offerings in history, matching Saudi Aramco's 2019 IPO at $29.4 billion and trailing only SpaceX's $75 billion-plus raise.
Proceeds will fund capacity expansion and EUV lithography equipment — the extreme-ultraviolet machines that etch chip circuits. The company says the listing will broaden its investor base and ensure its "true enterprise value is properly assessed."
Why did Micron's earnings electrify the entire memory sector?
Micron posted $41.46 billion in revenue for its fiscal Q3 ending May 31, up roughly 346% year-on-year. Data-center revenue hit $11.52 billion (~7.5× a year ago); cloud-storage revenue reached $13.77 billion (~4× a year ago). Together the two lines made up about 61% of total sales.
Micron guided Q4 adjusted revenue to $49–51 billion; the $50 billion midpoint beats the analyst consensus by nearly 20%.
This means → AI's pull on memory is no longer a forecast — it is showing up in hard dollars. Data-center and cloud lines are surging simultaneously, confirming demand-side acceleration.
What justifies SK Hynix's trillion-dollar valuation?
Over the past 12 months SK Hynix's Seoul-listed shares have rallied more than 850%, pushing its market cap past $1 trillion and briefly overtaking Samsung Electronics.
The moat is high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — ultra-fast memory designed specifically for AI chips. Counterpoint Research data show SK Hynix held 57% of the global HBM market by revenue as of Q4 2025.
FTSE Russell head of global investment research Indrani De noted that Korean companies control 80% of the HBM market and that "the supply shortage is expected to persist for years."
Why does Wall Street think the super-cycle lasts until 2028?
JPMorgan argues this cycle will run "higher and longer" — AI demand has spread from GPUs to CPUs, ASICs (application-specific chips), inference servers, and agentic computing systems. Memory's share of cloud providers' hardware capex could rise from over 50% today to nearly 73% by 2030.
Jefferies forecasts global memory-chip prices rising 40–50% quarter-on-quarter in Q3 2026, with another 30–40% gain possible in Q4. The first sign of easing may not appear until 2028, when average prices could fall 15–20% as capacity catches up.
SemiAnalysis models show that even after factoring in expansion plans from CXMT, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, the global DRAM market still faces a high-single-digit percentage supply gap in 2026 — widening to a low-to-mid-teens gap by 2027.
What is the market most worried about?
Fibonacci Asset Management Global CEO Jung In Yun says the focus is shifting from demand to execution — whether SK Hynix can scale HBM capacity and deliver on aggressive U.S. production targets is the key variable.
Siebert Financial CIO Mark Malek raises a capital-absorption concern: "There is only so much capital available to invest in IPOs, and SpaceX has certainly absorbed a large portion of it." In plain terms = the pool of money is finite, and several mega-IPOs are competing for the same dollars.
The ADR launch coincides with heightened volatility in AI-linked tech stocks — the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 7.9% in a single session on Tuesday, with 9 trading days over the past month seeing swings above 5%. This reflects a direct test: the market's confidence in HBM demand will be measured by whether the July 10 pricing holds.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.