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SK hynix's $26.5 Billion Nasdaq Listing Keeps AI IPO Momentum Alive as Smaller Deals Stall

October 1, 2026 at 13:40 EDT

Funding & M&A
Infra & Chips

SK hynix's $26.5 billion Nasdaq ADR sale kept AI-related mega-listings at the center of the U.S. IPO market in the third quarter, even as smaller companies delayed offerings and investors began demanding cleaner valuations. The deal gives public investors a large new way to buy exposure to high-bandwidth memory, one of the scarcest components in AI infrastructure.

Oct. 1, 2026 | U.S. IPO market

AI Megadeals Carry the Quarter

SK hynix's $26.5B Nasdaq ADR sale supplied most of Q3's U.S. IPO proceeds, while smaller offerings showed the market is becoming more selective.

SK hynix deal

$26.5B

Q3 U.S. IPOs

$36.1B

HBM share

56.4%

Ex-megadeals

-4%

One listing did most of the work

Q3 proceeds are shown to scale with vertical stacked blocks.

$36.1BQ3 total

$26.5BSK hynix

Why buyers showed up

SK hynix gives public investors direct exposure to HBM, the memory layer feeding GPUs and AI accelerators.

Why caution returned

Holtec Nuclear, Bamboo Insurance and Oura postponed IPOs as investors pushed back on smaller or less direct stories.

The next test is Anthropic

A potential frontier-AI listing would test whether demand extends beyond infrastructure suppliers into model developers with heavier compute needs.

Expected debut windowTerms still subject to change

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