SK Hynix: South Korean chip giant raises $26.5bn in US share sale

South Korean computer chip maker SK Hynix has raised $26.5bn (£19.8bn) in its New York share offering, marking the largest ever listing by a foreign firm in the US.

The company, a key supplier to artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia, said on Thursday that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares for $149 each. The shares are set to begin trading on Friday on the Nasdaq.

In May, SK Hynix saw its market value top $1tn in its home country, lifted by the boom in demand for AI chips.

Its share price has more than tripled in South Korea this year, which along with Samsung Electronics has helped boost the benchmark Kospi index by more than 70% over the same period.

Each American depositary share is equivalent to a tenth of a Seoul-traded common share, SK Hynix said.

SK Hynix is one of the world's biggest manufacturers of advanced memory chips used in AI infrastructure such as data centres.

Demand for the offering was reportedly over seven times more than the number of shares available, highlighting the strong investor appetite for a key company in the AI supply chain.

The offering gives US investors a way to buy SK Hynix shares without having to trade via an overseas stock exchange.

It gives the firm easier access to the huge amounts of potential investment from the world's biggest economy.

The company has previously said it will invest in developing South Korea's chip making and AI capabilities in the coming years.

In June, the country's government unveiled plans for more than $880bn of investments in partnership with SK Hynix and Samsung.

Both SK Hynix and Samsung have stock market valuations of more that $1tn, joining growing group of firms which includes tech giants Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Google-owner Alphabet.