Korea Data Center IPO to Test AI Investor Resolve

Elice priced its shares at 90,500 won apiece — at the top of the marketed range — for a post-listing market capitalization exceeding 1 trillion won. South Korean retail investors flocked to the stock, pouring roughly 10.3 trillion won into subscription deposits in hopes of buying shares. The retail offering was oversubscribed by more than 400 times. Elice’s debut comes less than two weeks after Nvidia Corp.-backed data-center operator Firmus Grid Ltd. pulled its planned IPO.

Investor worries about rising borrowing costs, fierce competition and long-term returns from massive AI-related spending are hitting valuations and upending IPO plans around the globe: Coreweave Inc.’s shares have more than halved since their May peak. Nscale Ltd. is facing opposition to the valuation target it’s pursuing in its IPO, Bloomberg News reported. To win over investors, Elice pointed to a 200% surge in first-half revenue to 34.4 billion won in its prospectus.

The company swung to an operating profit of 10.3 billion won, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization jumped more than 11-fold to 23.2 billion won. The company is expected to record an 83% sales jump in 2026 and an operating margin of about 33%, analyst Douglas Kim wrote in a note on Smartkarma. Founded in 2015 by three students in local top tech university KAIST’s doctorate program, Elice began as a coding education platform before pivoting to AI cloud infrastructure, supplying products including servers, liquid-cooled chips, cloud and networking infrastructure and software.

The company has since developed a modular data center platform with high-density power systems and advanced liquid cooling designed for high-performance AI chip clusters. Backed by venture capital firms including Vertex Growth and Altos Ventures, Elice plans to use its IPO proceeds to build more AI data centers around South Korea and abroad, according to Chief Executive Officer Jae Won Kim. Mirae Asset Securities Co. and Samsung Securities Co. served as lead underwriters.

“We’re going all-in on becoming a full-stack AI infrastructure leader globally,” Kim said in an interview. “This IPO is about giving ourselves the financial firepower to execute.” --With assistance from Soobin Kim. (Corrects name of venture capital firm in penultimate paragraph of story originally published Oct. 19.) More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com