Elice IPO Slump Tests South Korea’s AI Buildout

Elice Group shares opened at 75,700 won on Tuesday, 16% below their initial public offering price. The South Korean artificial intelligence infrastructure company had raised 201.1 billion won as it began trading. Its shares last traded at 66,600 won, down 27%, while the KOSDAQ index fell 1%.

The Japan Times reported that Elice shares dropped as much as 32% to 61,400 won in early trading. The paper put IPO proceeds at 201 billion won, or $151 million, and called the sale the bourse’s biggest IPO this year. Reuters reported proceeds of 201.1 billion won, or $151.12 million. Elice sold 2.22 million new shares at 90,500 won apiece, the top of its marketed price range. The Japan Times said the company’s post-listing market capitalization exceeded 1 trillion won.

Retail demand and company results

South Korean retail investors placed roughly 10.3 trillion won in subscription deposits to seek Elice shares. The retail offering attracted more than 400 times the shares available, even as Elice began its market debut below the IPO price.

Elice’s prospectus showed first-half revenue climbed 200% to 34.4 billion won. The company reported an operating profit of 10.3 billion won, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose more than 11-fold to 23.2 billion won. Analyst Douglas Kim wrote in a Smartkarma note that Elice was expected to post an 83% sales jump in 2026 and an operating margin of about 33%.

“While it's a company that already posts operating profit with the AI cloud business and it plans to respond to private-sector demand with the IPO proceeds, it remains to be seen whether the company can maintain its current profitability,” said Kim Dojoon, chief executive officer at Zian Investment Management. He said CoreWeave may have weakened investor sentiment, but added that Elice’s financial structure was “quite different” and that he didn’t think investors needed to view the company as particularly risky.

AI infrastructure faces investor scrutiny

Elice’s debut tested investor appetite for AI and data-center companies after an AI-led market selloff derailed some deals. The Japan Times reported that borrowing costs, competition and questions about long-term returns from AI spending weighed on valuations.

“Elice's debut comes at a time when sentiment toward AI infrastructure companies has weakened, particularly in the U.S.,” said Albert Yong, managing partner and chief investment officer at Petra Capital Management. “Sentiment toward AI infrastructure has been highly volatile and often disconnected from underlying fundamentals.”

Firmus Grid canceled its planned Sydney listing that month, while CoreWeave shares had fallen by more than half since their May peak. AirTrunk was delaying a planned IPO of a real estate investment trust, people familiar with the matter said. The report said Nscale also faced pushback over its target IPO valuation.

IPO proceeds earmarked for data centers

Three students in the doctorate program of KAIST founded Elice in 2015. The company started as a coding education platform, then shifted to AI cloud infrastructure. Its products include servers, liquid-cooled chips, cloud and networking equipment, and software. Elice also developed a modular data-center platform with high-density power systems and advanced liquid cooling for high-performance AI chip clusters.

Chief Executive Officer Jae Won Kim said Elice plans to use its IPO proceeds to build more AI data centers in South Korea and abroad. Venture capital firms including Vertex Ventures and Altos Ventures back the company. Mirae Asset Securities and Samsung Securities served as lead underwriters.

A successful offering would help end a South Korean IPO drought. First-time listings in Seoul raised $1.4 billion in 2026, compared with more than $3 billion in each of the previous three years, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. SK Hynix completed the biggest-ever U.S. share sale by a foreign company.

“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.”