Key Points

• SK Hynix scrapped the planned U.S. initial public offering of its Solidigm memory-chip unit.

• SK Hynix cited market conditions and share price trends for the decision.

• SK Hynix’s American depositary receipts jumped more than 6% ahead of the open on Friday.

It’s a funny old market.

South Korea’s SK Hynix sent out another warning signal for the AI trade overnight, scrapping the planned U.S. IPO of its Solidigm memory-chip unit. SK Hynix established Solidigm after it acquired Intel's NAND flash memory and SSD in 2021.

The company said the decision was made “in light of market conditions and share price trends.”

That should be causing nervousness, particularly as Anthropic is expected to publicly file for its IPO as early as Friday.

But SK Hynix’s American depositary receipts were jumping more than 5% ahead of the open Friday, along with the rest of the AI trade, too.

The shares initially fell around 4% in Korean trading before staging a comeback to close 4.4% higher—possibly as retail investors opted to buy the dip. That also looks to be happening in the U.S. to end the week.

However, it’s not looking like a strong rebound. Nasdaq futures were roughly flat after the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.6% in Thursday’s tech-sector bloodbath following Meta's earnings.

CoreWeave was rising 2.3% after a 10% slump, while Micron rose around 2% after a 6% fall in the previous session—to give an idea of the strength, or otherwise, of the nascent comeback Friday.

Significantly, though, the selloff is not continuing—at least not for now. But if Anthropic gets IPO stage fright, too, then that could change very quickly.