The shares surged as much as 17% in their Nasdaq trading debut on Friday following the record-breaking foreign listing.

South Korean computer chip maker SK Hynix has raised $26.5bn (£19.8bn) in its New York share offering, marking the largest ever listing by a foreign firm in the US. The company, a key supplier to AI chip giant Nvidia, said on Thursday it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares for $149 each. The shares surged as much as 17% on Friday in their first day of trading on the Nasdaq. SK Hynix saw its market value top $1tn in its home country in May, lifted by the boom in demand for AI chips. Its share price has more than tripled in South Korea this year, which along with Samsung Electronics has helped boost the benchmark Kospi index by more than 70% over the same period. SK Hynix is one of the world's leading memory chip makers. The industry has been given a major boost by the hundreds of billions being spent on AI. Shares in rivals Samsung Electronics and Micron have more than doubled in recent months. The debut comes after the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) said this week a global surge in AI infrastructure spending is actively shielding tech-heavy economies, including South Korea, from the growth-stifling effects of the war in the Middle East. The US listing gives SK Hynix easier access to huge amounts of potential investment from the world's biggest economy, which has fewer barriers than South Korea, said Seoul National University finance professor Jaewon Choi.