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An AI Data-Centre IPO Subscribed 408 Times by Retail Investors Fell 32% Below Its Offer Price on Its First Day in Seoul

Elice Group, a South Korean company that grew from an AI education platform into GPU data centres, listed on the Kosdaq on October 20, 2026 after pricing its IPO at 90,500 won, the top of the range, and raising 201.1 billion won ($150 million) on institutional demand of 388.84 times and retail demand of 408.26 times. The shares opened at 75,700 won, fell as low as 61,000 won and last traded at 65,300 won, 27.8% below the offer, in the week after Australia's Firmus shelved a $5 billion listing.

Oct 20, 2026

A company whose IPO drew more than 10 trillion won of retail deposits lost a third of its value in its first hours as a public company. Elice Group, which began as an AI education platform and has expanded into cloud services, GPU-based data centres and AI tools for businesses, priced its initial public offering at 90,500 won, the top of a 70,400 to 90,500 won range, raising 201.1 billion won, about $150 million. Institutional investors had bid for 388.84 times the shares on offer and retail investors 408.26 times, placing more than 10 trillion won of deposits to do so, according to Investing.com's account of the Reuters report.

The debut on Tuesday, October 20, 2026 went the other way. The shares opened on the Kosdaq at 75,700 won, 16.4% below the offer price, fell as far as 61,000 won, a 32.6% discount, and last traded at 65,300 won, down 27.8%, according to Investing.com; Bloomberg reported a fall of as much as 32% in early trading. The Kospi was down 2.5% the same day, with SK Hynix off 3.5%, so the listing met the worst possible tape, but the gap between a 400-times book and a 16% opening discount is not explained by the index.

The company's numbers are not the problem. Elice reported revenue of 34.4 billion won and operating profit of 10.3 billion won in the first half of 2026, against 39.5 billion won of revenue and 5.2 billion won of operating profit for all of 2025, and said it would use the proceeds to build data-centre capacity in Korea and expand to the United States, Japan and Singapore. What changed between the book-building and the listing is the market's view of who pays for AI data centres: in the intervening week CoreWeave's bonds traded at yields above 15%, hedge funds unwound AI positions for six straight sessions, and Australia's Nvidia-backed Firmus shelved its planned $5 billion IPO, citing scrutiny of AI valuations and the sustainability of infrastructure investment.

The mechanics of a Korean IPO make the first day unusually revealing. Retail allocations are small relative to demand, so most of the 408-times subscription was money that never received shares and was free to buy, or not, on the first day; the opening price is set by an auction before the bell, and a 16% discount at the open means that the buyers who had committed 10 trillion won in deposits a week earlier declined to pay the offer price in the market. Reuters-based reports noted that high borrowing costs, heavy capital requirements and uncertainty over when compute spending turns into profit have weighed on every data-centre investment this month.

For anyone watching the pipeline of AI listings, Elice is the first public price set after the mid-October repricing, and it was set about 30% lower than the one agreed before it. Anthropic's planned November listing, whose discussed valuation fell from $2 trillion to $1.5 trillion last week on no change in its disclosed numbers, is the next test at a scale ten thousand times larger.

Sources: Investing.com (Reuters) — Elice shares plunge 28% on debut as investor doubts over AI trade deepen (Oct 20, 2026); Bloomberg — Data-Center Firm Elice Plunges 32% in Debut After Korea IPO (Oct 20, 2026); Investing.com — Asia stocks slump as AI jitters hammer Korean chipmakers ahead of tech earnings (Oct 20, 2026)