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SK Hynix made history this week, pricing one hundred seventy seven point nine million American depositary shares at one hundred forty nine dollars each, raising roughly twenty six point five billion dollars in the largest US IPO ever by a foreign company. The move signals that institutional appetite for AI memory infrastructure remains voracious, and that investors are willing to pay a premium for exposure to the high-bandwidth memory powering the generative AI buildout.
That buildout is running into physical reality on the ground. A Digital Realty data center in Ashburn, Virginia sent dark smoke rising over the skyline during a mid-Atlantic heat wave that pushed the PJM grid toward its limits. Regulators warned data centers could face cutoffs, and large facilities fired up diesel generators to stay online. It is a stark reminder that AI ambition has a power bill attached.
Meanwhile, Apple is reportedly suing OpenAI, alleging the company orchestrated a deliberate campaign to recruit Apple engineers and extract confidential trade secrets to accelerate its own hardware ambitions. If the allegations hold, it raises serious questions about competitive conduct at the frontier of AI development, and the legal exposure OpenAI carries heading into what is already a complicated regulatory environment.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
