SK Hynix is set to price its Nasdaq listing this week, aiming to raise as much as $28 billion in what would rank as one of the largest share sales in history, according to Reuters. The company adjusted its target down from an initial $29.4 billion following recent pre-pricing pressure on its stock in Seoul, Quartz reported.The South Korean chipmaker does not need the money to survive. It is already profitable, its products are in shortage, and cornerstone investors have lined up before the deal even priced.That combination makes this listing less a lifeline and more a referendum on how much appetite is left for the AI trade.The SK Hynix Nasdaq offering: nuts and bolts SK Hynix filed a Form F-1 registration statement with the SEC to list American depositary shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker SKHY. The company plans to offer 17.79 million new ADSs, about 2.5% of its outstanding shares, according to the SEC filing.Three cornerstone investors — Baillie Gifford, Coatue Management, and Situational Awareness Partners — have already indicated interest in buying up to $7 billion of the shares combined, according to Investing.com.Pricing is expected Thursday, July 9, with shares set to begin trading on Friday, July 10. That gives investors a tight window to decide whether the valuation gap with U.S. rival Micron is worth closing.Why a profitable company is raising money it doesn’t strictly needSK Hynix’s Korea-listed shares slipped about 4% Monday to 2,327,000 won, even as the stock remains up roughly 273% so far in 2026, according to Reuters.The dip looks more like pre-pricing jitters than a change in the underlying demand story.Here is the part that should give investors pause. SK Hynix generated $85.8 billion in revenue over the 12 months through March, and could likely borrow cheaply against that cash flow instead of selling new shares.A Motley Fool analysis makes exactly this point: SK Hynix is choosing the stock market over the bond market anyway, and that choice is the signal worth watching.The shortage itself has already moved markets once. Comments last month that SK Hynix planned to slow its AI memory expansion triggered one of the Kospi’s worst single-day drops on record, according to Fortune.Proceeds are earmarked for the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster and the P&T7 advanced packaging plant in Cheongju, on top of a $4 billion packaging plant already under construction in Indiana, TheStreet reported.None of that capacity arrives fast enough to ease today’s HBM shortage. Customers, including Nvidia, are already reserving production years in advance, the same report confirmed.
SK Hynix expects to spend $7.8 billion on ASML’s EUV scanners as it prepares to price its up to $28 billion Nasdaq listing this week.Bloomberg / Getty Images
How much is SK Hynix spending on ASML’s EUV machines?SK Hynix expects to pay about 11.9 trillion won, or roughly $7.8 billion, for ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography scanners, according to a Seeking Alpha report.ASML is the only company that commercially builds EUV machines, which etch nanometer-scale patterns onto silicon wafers, the report noted. That monopoly is one reason memory chip capacity takes years to expand, not months.Related: After beating Samsung, tech titan files for IPODelivery of the new systems is not expected until December 2027, according to the same filing.That timeline confirms the shortage driving today’s memory prices will not ease anytime soon. SK Hynix separately told the SEC it expects net proceeds of about $28 billion from the Nasdaq offering, slightly below earlier gross estimates once underwriting fees are subtracted.Shares of ASML rose about 4% Monday, July 6, alongside those of other chip equipment makers, as the broader market rebounded from last week’s selloff, the Seeking Alpha report indicated. ASML’s other top customers include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Intel, both of which are also racing to secure scarce EUV capacity.What SK Hynix’s IPO says about the AI tradeSpaceX raised $85.7 billion in its June 12 debut, the largest IPO ever, after underwriters exercised their over-allotment option, the company confirmed.Alphabet issued $85 billion in stock on June 2, the largest public equity raise on record, according to The Motley Fool. Combined with SK Hynix, the three deals add up to roughly $200 billion pulled from investors in a matter of weeks.More IPO:Wall Street’s $200 billion IPO wave threatens sell-offOpenAI makes IPO decision amid Anthropic, SpaceX fervorAnthropic scales its most powerful AI a day after filing to IPOThe difference is what each company needed the cash for. SpaceX lost $4.9 billion last year and is funding unproven bets on Starship and AI data centers. SK Hynix and Alphabet are the opposite: cash-generative, already dominant, and under no obvious financial pressure.When the strongest companies in the market start behaving like the weakest ones, raising equity instead of debt, it tends to say more about how expensive money has become than about any single balance sheet.The numbers behind the deal:Global HBM market share sits at roughly 57%, with DRAM share at 32%, according to Tom’s Hardware data cited by TheStreet.Market capitalization has climbed toward $1.3 trillion after SK Hynix surpassed Samsung as Korea’s most valuable listed company.A roughly 700% gain over the trailing 12 months makes SK Hynix one of the sector’s top performers, according to Fortune.Second-largest share sale in history is the likely ranking for this offering, trailing only SpaceX and surpassing Saudi Aramco’s $25.6 billion 2019 IPO.SK Hynix’s listing will price this week, but the more useful signal, coming letter, is whether demand holds up for a deal from a company that, by its own numbers, doesn’t need the money.If a shortage this severe still requires outside capital to fix, and if equipment orders don’t arrive until 2027, that says something about how deep the AI buildout has to go before supply catches demand.The real test comes after the IPO. Will investors remain willing to fund that gap once today’s AI enthusiasm begins to cool?Related: Tokyo puts billions behind Micron’s chip plan