Key Takeaways:
A wave of blockbuster AI listings is drawing tens of billions of dollars from global investors, reinforcing a rotation away from crypto that has already pushed Bitcoin 50% below its all-time high.
SK Hynix, the South Korean memory-chip maker and Nvidia's lead high-bandwidth memory supplier, will begin trading on the Nasdaq on July 10 after its roughly $28 billion US share sale drew orders for more than seven times the available shares, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The offering of 177.9 million American depositary receipts attracted global long-only funds, sovereign wealth funds and specialist technology investors, with Baillie Gifford, Coatue Management and Situational Awareness Partners indicating interest for as much as $7 billion combined, Bloomberg reported.
The deal ranks as the world's second-largest share sale this year after SpaceX's $85.7 billion IPO last month. China's Changxin Memory Technologies, the country's largest DRAM maker, will follow with a 29.5 billion yuan ($4.3 billion) Shanghai IPO, with book building starting July 15, Reuters reported. CXMT posted first-quarter revenue of 50.8 billion yuan, up 700% year on year, and held about 7.7% of the global DRAM market last year.
The back-to-back semiconductor mega-listings underscore a broader capital allocation shift that has left crypto markets starved for liquidity. Bitcoin traded at $62,918.82 as of 05:30 UTC Thursday, down roughly 50% from its October all-time high, as investors have increasingly favored AI infrastructure plays over digital assets. Stablecoin market cap fell to $312 billion in June, its largest monthly drop since the TerraUSD collapse, while tokenized equity volumes surged 145% to a record $3.86 billion, driven largely by the SpaceX IPO, according to CoinDesk Research.
The AI pipeline shows no signs of slowing
OpenAI and Anthropic have both been discussed as companies that could eventually command valuations approaching $1 trillion. While market expectations had pointed to IPOs as early as this year, growing investor unease over AI valuations and a cooling in semiconductor shares could delay those listings until 2027, according to reports. Even so, another wave of AI mega-offerings would likely continue drawing liquidity away from crypto.
The concentration risk extends beyond crypto. SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics now account for roughly half of the Kospi's total weight, up from about a quarter at the end of last year, according to Zavier Wong, a market analyst at eToro. That concentration cuts both ways: Samsung forecast a nearly 19-fold profit jump this week, yet its stock still fell as the broader AI chip trade lost momentum.
For crypto investors, the signal is clear. Every billion dollars allocated to SK Hynix's ADRs or CXMT's Shanghai float is a billion dollars that could have flowed into Bitcoin ETFs or DeFi protocols. With the IPO pipeline still full and institutional capital chasing AI infrastructure, the rotation out of crypto may have further to run.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
