SK Hynix's $28B Nasdaq Listing Draws Leopold Aschenbrenner's Hedge Fund
SK Hynix formally launched its Nasdaq ADR offering this week, targeting roughly $28 billion in proceeds — a deal that would rank among the largest share sales in history, trailing only SpaceX’s IPO from last month. Pricing is expected Thursday, with trading set to begin Friday under the ticker SKHY.
The scale. SK Hynix is selling 17.79 million new shares via ADRs, with 10 ADRs representing one common share. The target was revised down from an earlier filing that sought closer to $29.6 billion, after the stock corrected in Seoul in the run-up to pricing. Even at the reduced size, it would surpass both the Saudi Aramco and Alibaba IPOs.
Who’s backing it. Three cornerstone investors — Baillie Gifford, Coatue Management, and Situational Awareness LP, the AI-focused hedge fund run by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner — have collectively indicated interest in buying up to $7 billion of the ADRs. SK Hynix already represents a meaningful share of Situational Awareness’s disclosed portfolio, which underlines how concentrated the conviction behind this trade has become. That concentration cuts both ways: it signals strong belief in the memory cycle’s durability, but it also means a sharp reversal in HBM demand would hit these funds harder than a diversified allocator.
Why SK Hynix wants a U.S. listing. SK Hynix has historically only traded in Seoul, leaving U.S. investors reliant on lower-liquidity unsponsored ADRs. A Nasdaq listing opens the door to direct U.S. trading, eligibility for major indices including the Nasdaq 100, and — analysts hope — a narrowing of the valuation gap with Micron, its primary U.S.-listed HBM competitor. SK Hynix holds a dominant share of the global HBM market and is a critical supplier to Nvidia’s AI accelerator lineup, with its 2026 chip capacity effectively sold out.
The risk analysts are flagging. SK Hynix doesn’t need this capital to survive — it’s profitable, its products are in shortage, and it could likely borrow against cash flow instead of diluting shareholders. That makes the listing look less like a funding necessity and more like a bet that U.S. investor appetite for the AI memory trade still has room to run. With SK Hynix’s Korea-listed shares already up well over 200% year-to-date, the market is effectively being asked whether this cycle is still early or already in its mid-phase.