Bankers Circle Solidigm Prize as SK Hynix Ties Up Loose Ends at Home
Published on 09/26/2026 at 12:10 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Investment banks spent this week pitching for a seat on what could become the largest semiconductor listing ever seen on US soil. The prize is Solidigm, the NAND flash and solid-state drive unit owned by South Korea's SK Hynix, and the venue under discussion is New York.
People familiar with the matter say a flotation could land as early as 2027 and might value the storage specialist at up to $150 billion. Should the offering raise the mooted $15 billion, it would eclipse anything the chip industry has brought to American exchanges. Arm's 2023 debut, by comparison, carried a valuation of roughly $54 billion.
SK Hynix has moved to temper expectations, stressing that a range of options for sharpening Solidigm's competitive edge are under review and that nothing has been finalized. Bloomberg reported that the subsidiary, which specializes in NAND flash memory, has already begun talks with potential advisers to sound out a US listing, though no decision on timing or structure has been reached.
From Intel Handoff to AI Storage Contender
Solidigm traces its origins to 2021, when SK Hynix bought Intel's NAND flash and SSD business for about $9 billion. Headquartered in Rancho Cordova, California, the company now builds memory solutions aimed at data centers and cloud servers. Demand for high-capacity enterprise SSDs has gathered strong momentum from the global build-out of artificial intelligence computing capacity.
The scale of the contemplated deal has few precedents in the sector. Market reports suggest SK Hynix is weighing bridge financing of around 5 trillion won for Solidigm ahead of any US listing, part of a broader push to raise capital while repositioning the business geographically.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?
Not everyone in Seoul is cheering. The Korea Corporate Governance Forum has urged a rethink, pointing to the group's five-tier ownership chain. Listing an operating grandchild company separately on a foreign exchange, the forum argues, exposes shareholders of the parent entities to risk, since multiple listings have historically been associated with valuation discounts at the group level.
HBM Grip Remains the Core Story
Away from the listing chatter, SK Hynix's day-to-day business continues to ride the AI wave. As a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory modules to Nvidia, the company captured a 50 percent worldwide share of that segment in the second quarter, according to industry data from Counterpoint.
Attention now turns to the exchange rate ahead of the upcoming quarterly results. Analysts at US bank Citi trimmed their operating profit forecasts for the third quarter modestly, citing fluctuations in the South Korean won.
Whether Solidigm can ultimately command the lofty valuation being floated depends heavily on how durable the capital spending momentum of major cloud operators proves to be in the years ahead.
Building an Ecosystem, and Buying Labor Peace
The US ambitions form part of a wider corporate offensive. Management used a stateside gathering to lay out its technology vision for artificial intelligence, its global expansion plans and efforts to evolve company culture. On September 18 the group launched "SK Hynix Ventures," a venture capital arm tasked with forging strategic partnerships and stakes in data centers, system software, optical interconnects and AI computing. A day earlier, it unveiled specialized memory and infrastructure technologies including HBF, PIM/AiMX and SALT-KV solutions.
Closer to home, SK Hynix removed an internal obstacle. In a ballot, 57.1 percent of employees voted in favor of a proposal, with 8,731 votes cast. The agreement lifts the cash portion of profit-sharing bonuses from 40 percent to 50 percent while reducing the stock-based component by the same measure — clearing the decks as the memory maker sharpens its focus on key international markets.
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