The business SK hynix bought for $8.85 billion now carries a $35 billion price tag

Solidigm, SK hynix's US subsidiary, is raising money ahead of a Nasdaq listing. The round is being marketed at a valuation of roughly 50 trillion won, and it is seeking up to 10 trillion won.

SK hynix-owned Solidigm seeks up to $7bn in pre-IPO share sale (KED Global, 2026-08-05)

출처: kedglobal.com

The company exists because SK hynix bought Intel's NAND business outright. The price it paid was $8.85 billion.

What NAND actually does

NAND is the chip that keeps the photos on your phone and the files on your laptop from disappearing. It is storage memory that holds its contents with the power off, and in a data centre it is packed into a box and plugged into a server. That box is an SSD, and the enterprise version has its own name, eSSD.

That box is what Solidigm sells.

What changed since Intel sold

Intel put this business up for sale when NAND was not making money. Prices swung hard while the cost of building capacity kept climbing, so Intel chose to leave the business entirely. The picture is now inverted. AI servers need somewhere to keep the data their models read, and enterprise SSD contract prices rose roughly 80% in the first quarter of 2026 alone. In that same quarter the top five vendors booked a record $18.46 billion in enterprise SSD revenue.

The QLC fork

NAND types are separated by how many bits go into one storage cell. TLC holds three bits, QLC holds four. The more bits per cell, the more capacity in the same area, and the less rewriting the cell survives.

What AI servers mostly do is read stored data over and over. When the erase and rewrite count is low, QLC's weakness barely shows and only its advantage remains, which is more capacity for the same money. TrendForce described SK hynix Group's first quarter as a division of labour, with Solidigm ramping QLC shipments while SK hynix itself expanded TLC.

Intel and SK hynix close NAND business deal (Tom's Hardware, 2025-03-28)

출처: tomshardware.com

That article carries one more point worth lifting. The deal did not finish in 2021. It was split into two closings, and the NAND patents and the research staff only crossed over on March 27, 2025. Until then Solidigm had the fab and the products but did not own the underlying technology.

What Solidigm is being priced at

Seen from the pricing side, NAND is at the top of its range right now. Whether the listed market accepts a number set at the peak of a boom is a separate question. This is the fork. If the pre-IPO round closes near its target and a Nasdaq listing follows, SK hynix will have turned one business bought from Intel into several times its purchase price in cash and equity value. If the raise or the valuation falls short, or the round slips, the message is that the market reads today's NAND prices as the top of a cycle. For an investor the question that splits here is whether SK hynix shares are already pricing a memory boom or the re-rating of a single subsidiary.