SK hynix has halted its review of a pre-IPO and Nasdaq listing for Solidigm, the California NAND unit it assembled from Intel’s flash business, saying market conditions made a float a worse deal for existing shareholders.
The company disclosed the decision in a regulatory filing and a newsroom statement on Oct 23. Solidigm, based in Rancho Cordova, was created in 2021 when SK hynix paid $9B for Intel’s NAND and SSD operations, and it has since become the vehicle for supplying high-capacity enterprise drives into AI data centers.
Two forces pushed the listing off course. Domestic investors argued that a new share issue would dilute SK hynix’s stake and hand part of Solidigm’s profit to outsiders, a complaint that hardened into a fight over duplicate listings in a group that already stacks SK Square and SK Inc. above the memory maker. Korean regulators, who began enforcing guidelines against duplicate listings in August, and a National Assembly audit added pressure.
The funding gap is what remains. SK hynix said Solidigm’s existing plants are too small for the demand it sees and that the unit needs additional US production. It had already been weighing direct investment alongside outside capital, and had named Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as underwriters.
Now the company says it will keep evaluating the timing, size and financing of new American capacity while looking for other ways to raise money. SK hynix previously weighed a New York plant for Solidigm, and the chipmaker’s effort to run its China NAND site on newer tooling is tied up in US licence questions.
The shares rose on the news. For the wider memory buildout, the signal is that capital markets are no longer an open tap, even for a supplier whose products are sold out.
