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.

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

This gives the company easier access to the huge amounts of potential investment from the worlds biggest economy.

The company is one of the worlds biggest manufacturers of advanced memory chips used in AI infrastucture 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.