SK Hynix Weighs $150 Billion Solidigm Listing as US Fab Talks and Labor Peace Reshape Its Playbook

SK Hynix opens bank talks for a Solidigm listing valued at up to $150 billion, as Citi trims its Q3 outlook on a stronger won.

SK Hynix is moving on several fronts at once, and the most eye-catching is the potential public listing of its California-based subsidiary Solidigm. According to Reuters, the South Korean chipmaker kicked off initial selection talks with leading investment banks this week, with a valuation of up to $150 billion on the table. Solidigm, which supplies enterprise SSDs and NAND flash memory for data centers, could raise roughly $15 billion in fresh capital through the offering. A debut of that size would dwarf the sector's recent benchmarks — Arm's 2023 Nasdaq listing, for instance, was valued at about $54 billion.

For the parent company, pulling off such a deal would mark a notable strategic win. SK Hynix originally acquired the NAND and SSD business from Intel before spinning it into a standalone unit, and the timing looks favorable: cloud infrastructure buildouts and AI data centers are fueling heavy demand for ultra-fast storage.

US Manufacturing Options Still Open

Solidigm is also reportedly weighing construction of a NAND flash plant on American soil, with New York state seen as the leading candidate. SK Hynix, however, stressed that no specific plans have been confirmed. The same caution applies to the parent's own US ambitions. Among the options under review are leasing space at Intel's planned Ohio site and forming a joint venture with Intel and major cloud providers. Reuters and CNBC both report that no agreement and no binding production schedule have been reached. SK Hynix said only that it is evaluating ways to strengthen its global competitiveness, and that concrete partnerships or firm arrangements for US memory production have yet to be finalized.

Citi Trims Q3 Outlook on Currency Headwind

Back in its core business, SK Hynix continues to benefit from sustained capital spending by major technology firms on cutting-edge memory chips. Currency markets, though, are taking a bite out of group-level earnings. Analysts at Citi nudged their third-quarter operating profit forecast lower, pointing to the appreciation of the South Korean won against the US dollar as the primary drag on revenue from the export-heavy chip operation. Even with that short-term currency dent, the broader setup in the global memory race remains promising. Rivals Samsung Electronics and Micron are pushing their own capacity expansions, while SK Hynix keeps advancing volume shipments of its newest memory technologies — and the freshly launched preparations for a US listing underscore its intent to capitalize on the momentum.

Labor Deal Closes Out Wage Talks

Closer to home, SK Hynix resolved an internal dispute on September 16, when employees approved a preliminary wage agreement with management. The workforce had narrowly rejected an earlier draft, and the new deal formally wraps up this year's collective bargaining and pay negotiations.

Chipmakers Push Back on Power Prepayment

Two days earlier, on September 14, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics jointly rejected a financial demand from Korea Electric Power Corp. The state utility had sought an upfront payment of 25 trillion won — equivalent to $18.7 billion — to supply electricity to planned semiconductor mega-clusters. Both chipmakers questioned the need for prepayments of that magnitude, a joint refusal that highlights the industry's resistance to shouldering extra financial burdens ahead of building out the large-scale production hubs at home.