Stocks Rise, Buoyed By SK Hynix’s First Day Of Trading In The U.S.
Stocks rose on Friday buoyed by SK Hynix’s first day of trading in the U.S. The S&P 500 rose by 0.21%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite underperformed, climbing 0.27%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.30%.
The South Korean company soared by 14% after the company’s ADRs opened at $170 per share.
The ADRs were initially priced at $149 as the company seeks to finance its expansion plans, which include new factories and equipment.
Under the structure of the offering, 10 ADRs represent one common share. The fundraising comes at a pivotal moment for the global semiconductor industry, where AI infrastructure spending has transformed the fortunes of memory chip manufacturers. SK Hynix has emerged as the world’s leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), an advanced type of memory essential for training and operating large artificial intelligence models.
Meta also overperformed, climbing 6% in the session and closing the week 15% higher, its best performance since early 2024.
The company made two key announcements this week. It released Muse Image, a new AI model for creating images, and unveiled Muse Spark, which runs agentic and coding workloads.
The company is making its API available through a developer portal as part of a public preview, CNBC noted. There, users can sign up and get steps for integration. For now, the company is limiting to its own properties and not making it available on third-party platforms.
“This is going to be served on top of the computer infrastructure that we’ve built,” said Wang. Elsewhere, he said API accounts will start with $20 in free credits, then charging $1.25 per million token inputs and $4.25 per million tokens of output.
The company is also preparing to launch a cloud computing business aimed at selling excess artificial intelligence computing capacity as it seeks to capitalize on its massive investment on AI. The company has projected between $125 billion and $145 billion in capital expenditures this year, one of the largest technology investment programs in corporate history.
Bloomberg News detailed last week that Meta is developing a cloud business that would allow outside customers to access the company’s AI infrastructure and computing power, clarifying that the plan remains under development and could still change.
The strategy puts Meta in direct competition with established cloud giants such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, while also challenging specialized AI infrastructure providers including CoreWeave and Nebius.
Meta’s cloud platform could allow developers to access AI models running on the company’s infrastructure while paying for the computing power required to operate them. The company is also reportedly considering selling raw AI compute capacity, similar to the services offered by emerging “neocloud” providers.
