A bold, decade-old bet by South Korean billionaire Chey Tae-won pays off Friday as chipmaker SK Hynix debuts on Nasdaq with a valuation of $26.5 billion.
The listing marks the culmination of a strategy once considered risky. In 2012, SK Group acquired a loss-making Hynix. Under Chey's leadership, the company invested heavily in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, then a niche technology.
That wager transformed SK Hynix into a critical supplier for Nvidia's AI accelerators, making it the world's leading HBM producer. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently credited the partnership as fundamental to the AI industry's development.
Chey faces new challenges. Despite a booming market, he has expressed concern that soaring memory prices and supply shortages cannot last forever. Recent multi-billion-dollar investment pledges from SK Hynix and Samsung have raised fears of potential oversupply in the cyclical chip industry.
The listing also elevates the profile of a complex corporate leader. Chey, estimated to be worth $5.4 billion, has navigated personal and legal controversies, including a prison sentence for embezzlement and a high-profile divorce case with hundreds of millions at stake.
His legacy, however, is now increasingly defined by one of South Korea's most successful corporate bets, turning a struggling chipmaker into an AI powerhouse.