SK hynix (KRX:000660) has terminated its evaluation of a public share sale for its U.S.-based NAND subsidiary Solidigm, the company said on October 23. The decision removes a potential source of equity capital and leaves the memory maker searching for an alternative way to finance additional NAND flash production in the United States. SK hynix maintains that the extra capacity is still required to meet expected demand.
According to TrendForce estimates for the second quarter of 2026, SK hynix Group—including Solidigm—accounted for approximately 23% of revenue among the top five enterprise SSD vendors. That figure is based on group-level sales, not Solidigm’s standalone revenue or wafer output. The top five vendors generated a combined $37.59 billion in the quarter, with Samsung leading at $14.35 billion and SK hynix Group exceeding $8.63 billion. Micron followed at $6.98 billion, Kioxia at $4.64 billion, and SanDisk at $2.98 billion. Total top-five revenue more than doubled from the prior quarter, rising 103.6%, driven by both higher average selling prices and increased shipments. Because of the price component, that growth rate cannot be interpreted as a direct measure of growth in physical storage capacity.
SK hynix has said its existing Solidigm facilities have limited room to accommodate rising demand. The company had weighed direct investment alongside outside equity financing. Friday’s announcement did not specify a U.S. fab location, the amount of capital to be invested, targeted wafer capacity, or a production start date. Those omissions make it impossible to quantify how much additional supply might eventually reach the market.
Reuters separately reported the listing decision on October 23, also noting concerns raised by South Korean authorities regarding shareholder interests. SK hynix’s own explanation pointed to capital-market conditions and share-price trends. Neither account included a replacement financing agreement for the U.S. production expansion.
On the demand side, customer allocation already involves long-term commitments. On August 5, CoreWeave announced a multiyear agreement with Solidigm that secures priority access to enterprise SSD capacity for its AI cloud platform. The announcement did not disclose drive volumes or contract value. “Storage is part of that promise,” CoreWeave chief operating officer Sachin Jain said at the time, referring to the company’s integrated infrastructure offering.
Solidigm’s existing product lineup illustrates why drive density and manufacturing capacity must be measured separately. The D5-P5336 product brief lists 192-layer QLC NAND and capacities including 61.44 TB and 122.88 TB. The company positions the family for read-intensive workloads such as AI data lakes and object storage.
Using those specifications, reaching one petabyte of raw storage requires nine 122.88 TB drives, while the 61.44 TB option needs 17 drives. The calculation rounds up to whole drives and excludes redundancy, spares, and filesystem overhead; it describes a configuration, not an observed customer installation. While the denser drive reduces the number of occupied storage slots by eight, every byte still requires flash memory. Factory output depends on different evidence: wafer starts, usable die per wafer, and production qualification timelines. Friday’s announcement provided none of those metrics.
Several risks could alter the expansion schedule, including financing, site selection, and equipment installation. SK hynix has not disclosed a production start date or a wafer target, so the IPO halt alone cannot establish that a supply delay is imminent. A replacement funding commitment would make the manufacturing plan more measurable; an investment amount, monthly wafer target, and qualification schedule would connect capital to potential deliveries. SK hynix says investment timing, scale, and financing remain under review. The key questions—who will fund the additional U.S. capacity, and when will it produce qualified NAND—remain unanswered.
