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Hedge fund run by ex-OpenAI researcher bets on SK Hynix’s US IPO

Situational Awareness joins UK investor Baillie Gifford backing the South Korean memory maker’s American debut

The illuminated SK Hynix logo displayed on a booth, with a stylized butterfly symbol above the company name.The rising demand for SK Hynix’s memory chips has sent its shares up more than 750% over the past year on the Kospi in Seoul© Reuters

Ryan McMorrow and Michael Acton in San Francisco

PublishedJuly 6 2026

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An ex-OpenAI researcher’s hedge fund and UK investor Baillie Gifford have signalled they could take a large chunk of South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix’s $28bn share sale in New York this week.

The Nasdaq initial public offering for the South Korean group, formally launched on Monday, comes as the building of AI data centres drives rocketing demand for memory chips. It is set to be one of the largest ever listings by an Asian company in New York.

AI demand drove SK Hynix’s revenues up 47 per cent to Won 97.1tn ($63bn) in 2025 while profit more than doubled to Won 42.9tn ($28bn). In the first quarter, revenue nearly tripled year-on-year to Won 52.6tn ($34.5bn).

The rising demand for SK Hynix’s memory chips has sent its shares up more than 750 per cent over the past year on the Kospi in Seoul, its main listing, bringing its market cap to Won 1,663tn ($1.1tn).

Investment firms Situational Awareness, Baillie Gifford and Coatue indicated they could take as much as $7bn of the American depositary shares (ADS) that SK Hynix plans to sell in an additional listing on Nasdaq. The US shares are set to start trading on Friday in New York.

Hedge fund Situational Awareness, founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has made a series of prescient bets on stocks linked to AI, attracting a large following among retail investors.

SK Hynix will pour the $28bn in proceeds from the US share sale into expanding its manufacturing capacity as it races to keep pace with AI-driven demand.

The bulk of the funds are earmarked for building chip fabrication plants in Korea, while a portion will also go towards purchasing EUV lithography scanners — the advanced machines made by the Netherlands’ ASML that are essential to producing cutting-edge memory.

SK Hynix and fellow South Korean memory giant Samsung last week announced a $600bn plan to significantly expand their manufacturing capacity in the country as customers clamour for more output.

A global memory chip shortage triggered by huge demand for advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in AI data centres has lifted the shares of the three main global players, SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron. The trio have all surpassed $1tn valuations this year.

SK Hynix has managed to leapfrog Samsung to take the lead in HBM technology. It was the first to develop HBM3, which quickly became the preferred memory technology to use alongside the AI accelerators that power frontier AI models. SK Hynix emerged as the primary supplier to Nvidia, cornering roughly half of the global HBM market.

SK Hynix said it would issue 17.79mn new shares, equal to about 2.5 per cent of its stock, in the form of ADS listed on Nasdaq. The size of the offering was set to ensure that its controlling shareholder, the SK Group holding company SK Square, retains more than a 20 per cent stake.

Bankers will set the ADS price based on its Kospi-listed share price, which on July 3 equated to about $158 per ADS. Underwriters leading the deal include Bank of America, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

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