The shares are set to start trading on the Nasdaq on Friday in what will be the largest ever debut by a foreign firm.

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 artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia, said on Thursday that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares for $149 each. The shares are set to begin trading on Friday on the Nasdaq. In May, SK Hynix saw its market value top $1tn in its home country, 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. Each American depositary share is equivalent to a tenth of a Seoul-traded common share, SK Hynix said. SK Hynix is one of the world's biggest manufacturers of advanced memory chips used in AI infrastructure such as data centres. Demand for the offering was reportedly over seven times more than the number of shares available, highlighting the strong investor appetite for a key company in the AI supply chain. The offering gives US investors a way to buy SK Hynix shares without having to trade via an overseas stock exchange.