The $150 Billion IPO That Depends on a Factory That Doesn’t Exist Yet

On September 26, 2026, three push notifications appeared almost at the same time in Chinese tech media. 36Kr, Cailian Press, and TechFlowPost all said the same thing: Solidigm, a subsidiary of SK Hynix, is considering a U.S. IPO as early as 2027, with a valuation of up to $100 billion. Bloomberg said $100 billion. Reuters said $150 billion. The two figures differ by $50 billion, about the market value of Arm Holdings.

Solidigm declined to comment. SK Hynix’s ADR rose nearly 3% in overnight trading. Intel climbed more than 3%. The market moved first. The company has not spoken.

The NAND business bought for $9 billion

Solidigm starts in October 2020. SK Hynix announced it would buy Intel’s NAND flash and SSD business for about $9 billion. In 2021, Solidigm was established, with headquarters in California. In March 2025, the second closing was completed, and SK Hynix took over the NAND technology and manufacturing business.

At the time, the deal looked like a defensive move beyond DRAM. Intel’s NAND business had been marginal, with limited profit. SK Hynix paid $9 billion, and the market barely reacted.

Five years later, the same asset carries a valuation of $100 billion to $150 billion. AI changed the math.

The first half of 12.25 trillion won

SK Hynix’s report for the period ended June 30, 2026, using “NAND product solutions company and subsidiaries” as the scope, showed first-half revenue of 12.25 trillion won, about $9.03 billion, up 265% from a year earlier. Net profit was 5.839 trillion won, about $4.31 billion, 44 times higher.

Revenue and profit rose together because NAND prices moved up. Bank of America’s third-quarter 2026 channel survey found NAND prices up more than 15%. Average DRAM selling prices rose 20% to 30% from the previous quarter. OEMs and large tech companies are scrambling for supply.

Solidigm’s product mix meets the main demand of AI data centers: high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs. Its 321-layer process continued to ramp. Orders for high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs surged. SK Hynix Group, including Solidigm, saw second-quarter NAND revenue rise 89.5% from the previous quarter, topping $14.27 billion.

TrendForce data shows QLC’s share of enterprise SSD capacity will climb from 9% in 2022 to 38% in 2027. Solidigm has a first-mover advantage in that shift.

CoreWeave’s multi-year agreement

In August 2026, AI cloud company CoreWeave signed a multi-year agreement with Solidigm for priority access to enterprise SSD capacity. CoreWeave wrote in the announcement that the direct deal would “lock in priority allocation against the backdrop of accelerating enterprise AI adoption and tightening storage supply across the industry.”

Storage is becoming a second category of strategic material after GPUs. Solidigm is one of the few manufacturers that can reliably supply high-capacity enterprise SSDs. The CoreWeave deal gives Solidigm a signed customer for its standalone valuation.

Between $100 billion and $150 billion

The first gap is valuation. Reuters reported an upper limit of $150 billion. Bloomberg reported $100 billion. The $50 billion difference reflects disagreement over Solidigm’s standalone pricing.

Optimists see long-term certainty in AI storage demand. Cautious observers see a debt ratio of 4,484.6%, about 22 times the generally accepted healthy level of below 200%.

The second gap is manufacturing. Solidigm has one NAND production base, in Dalian, China. In the United States, it keeps only its headquarters and R&D center. The Dalian plant faces two pressures: potential U.S. tariffs on Chinese manufacturing, and semiconductor equipment export restrictions that block EUV, delaying planned upgrades and expansion.

SK Hynix has restarted construction of the Dalian Phase II fab. The plan is to raise local NAND output by about 50% by 2027, from about 100,000 wafers per month to about 150,000. The Dalian plant mainly uses mature technology for 100-layer products. High-end products above 300 layers come from the M17 fab in Cheongju, South Korea. Solidigm’s advanced-process capacity depends on its Korean parent.

Upstate New York and Ohio

A U.S. plant is a key piece of the IPO story. Solidigm is considering a NAND flash factory in the United States, with upstate New York as the main candidate. NAND is less politically sensitive than DRAM and HBM, so the resistance to a U.S. plant may be lower than for other memory products.

SK Hynix is talking with Intel about producing memory chips on U.S. soil. Options include leasing part of Intel’s Ohio fab site or forming a joint venture with Intel and large cloud providers. If it happens, Solidigm would gain advanced manufacturing capacity in the United States and reduce its dependence on Dalian.

A wafer fab takes years and billions of dollars. SK Hynix’s NAND capital spending has fallen for three straight years, from $3.5 billion in 2023 to $2.9 billion in 2025. Equipment investment goes first to DRAM and HBM. For Solidigm to build a competitive NAND plant in the U.S., there is a gap between the capital required and SK Hynix’s willingness to spend it.

Supply and demand in the second half of 2027

The third gap is the cycle. In August 2026, Korean brokerages cut their target prices for Samsung and SK Hynix by about 30%. Concerns that the memory chip industry has peaked have not gone away.

TrendForce forecasts a NAND flash shortage of 4% to 5% for all of 2026, with tight supply throughout the year. In the second half of 2027, supply and demand may turn positive, and supply constraints may ease. If Solidigm completes its IPO in the second half of 2027 or early 2028, the NAND market may be shifting from shortage to balance.

Why SK Hynix needs this listing

SK Hynix has several goals for the IPO. The most direct is an independent market valuation for NAND. SK Hynix is known mainly for DRAM and HBM, and its NAND business has long been undervalued inside the group. After the spin-off and listing, investors can value Solidigm’s NAND and eSSD businesses separately. SK Hynix can also sell part of its stake and use the money for DRAM and HBM capacity.

The IPO also moves SK Hynix from Korean memory giant toward global AI infrastructure supplier. By putting its NAND business on Nasdaq as an American company, SK Hynix gains access to dollar capital and a seat closer to core AI customers. Solidigm’s customer list includes CoreWeave, Vast Data, Dell, and Tencent.

The risks are clear. If the IPO valuation disappoints, Solidigm’s fundraising shrinks, and SK Hynix’s share price and credit rating could feel the effect. If the NAND market rebalances in 2027, investors who bought at a high valuation will face slower earnings growth. If the U.S. plant does not happen, Solidigm’s label as an “American AI company” will face doubt.

The foundation piles still haven’t been driven

In January this year, SK Hynix announced plans to reorganize its NAND product solutions company into a U.S. AI business company. Existing operations would move to a new subsidiary, Solidigm, which keeps the Solidigm brand. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have been chosen as lead underwriters. Solidigm is exploring a pre-IPO round of about 5 trillion won, or about $3.6 billion.

The factory site in upstate New York is still being evaluated. The lease talks in Ohio are still moving. The capacity target for the Dalian Phase II fab is written into the 2027 plan. The forecast of a 4% to 5% NAND shortage comes from TrendForce. The 2027 calendar has already turned to that page. The factory’s foundation piles still have not been driven.