SK Telecom is proving the success of the most aggressive AI equity investment strategy among South Korean telecom operators, racking up massive valuation gains from its investments in artificial intelligence (AI) companies. The book value of its stake in U.S. AI company Anthropic, into which it has invested a cumulative \u20a9270 billion (approximately $195.2 million) since 2023, surpassed \u20a93.5 trillion (approximately $2.5 billion) as of end-June. The remaining stake value in MakinaRocks, a South Korean physical AI company invested in at its early founding stage in 2018, has also exceeded 20 times its acquisition cost.<\/p>\n
According to an analysis of SK Telecom’s semi-annual report released on the 25th, the book value of the company’s 576,000 MakinaRocks shares stood at \u20a99.642 billion (approximately $7.0 million) as of end-June this year. The acquisition cost of the stake was \u20a9450 million (approximately $330,000), meaning the book value is roughly 21.4 times the principal. The valuation gain on the stake amounts to \u20a99.192 billion (approximately $6.6 million).<\/p>\n
MakinaRocks is a spin-off company founded in 2018 by researchers who had been developing manufacturing-specialized AI technology at SK Telecom. SK Telecom invested \u20a9900 million (approximately $650,000) at the time of founding to secure 1.152 million shares. The company has since grown into a physical AI company supplying AI operating systems in the manufacturing and defense sectors, and listed on the KOSDAQ market in May.<\/p>\n
SK Telecom disposed of half of its stake\u2014576,000 shares\u2014during the first half of this year, though the sale amount was not disclosed. The company plans to reinvest the proceeds from the stake sale into the AI sector while continuing collaboration with MakinaRocks in physical AI and robotics.<\/p>\n
The Anthropic investment has generated valuation gains in the trillions of won. SK Telecom invested approximately \u20a9130 billion (approximately $94.0 million) in 2023, followed by an additional approximately \u20a9140 billion (approximately $101.2 million) in the first half of this year. The cumulative investment amounts to approximately \u20a9270 billion. The book value of the Anthropic stake surged from \u20a91.3762 trillion (approximately $995.0 million) at the end of last year to \u20a93.505 trillion (approximately $2.5 billion) as of end-June this year\u2014roughly 12.9 times the cumulative investment.<\/p>\n
Investment, Collaboration, Recovery, Reinvestment\u2026 Building an AI Virtuous Cycle<\/p>\n
The investments in these two companies are the fruit of SK Telecom’s years-long strategy to secure early positions in AI companies. Rather than developing all technologies in-house, the approach involves securing stakes in promising companies and integrating their technologies into its own services and infrastructure businesses. Investment targets span a wide range, from AI foundation models to search and agents, video understanding, enterprise AI, physical AI, and graphics processing unit (GPU) cloud services.<\/p>\n
A representative example is AI search company Perplexity. SK Telecom invested $10 million (approximately \u20a914 billion) in the company and integrated its search technology into A., its AI personal assistant. It invested $3 million (approximately \u20a94.1 billion) in Twelve Labs, a video understanding AI company. It put \u20a915 billion (approximately $10.8 million) and \u20a95.4 billion (approximately $3.9 million) into Scatter Lab and Allganize, respectively. It also invested in Lambda, a GPU cloud company, establishing a link to its AI data center business.<\/p>\n
Efforts are also underway to bring portfolio companies together into a single ecosystem. SK Telecom launched the “K-AI Alliance” in 2023 centered on its portfolio companies, and the number of participating companies has grown to 50 this year. Starting this year, it introduced a company-in-company (CIC) structure with separate entities responsible for telecom and AI businesses, strengthening the independence and execution capability of its AI operations.<\/p>\n
SK Telecom is also expanding technology collaboration with portfolio companies into a group-level AI infrastructure strategy. The vision is to build an “AI full stack” spanning semiconductors, data centers, and AI services by connecting SK Hynix’s high-bandwidth memory (HBM), SK Ecoplant’s data center construction capabilities, and the power infrastructure of its energy affiliates. In the second quarter of this year, SK Telecom’s AI data center revenue rose 92.5% year-over-year to \u20a9136.2 billion (approximately $98.5 million).<\/p>\n
A Different “AI Investment Playbook” from Rivals\u2026 The Key Is Synergy with Core Business<\/p>\n
KT and LG Uplus are also pouring massive resources into AI businesses, but their capital deployment approaches differ. KT is placing weight on its five-year AI and cloud partnership with Microsoft worth approximately \u20a92.4 trillion (approximately $1.7 billion). LG Uplus is expanding its business around the Paju AI data center, into which it is investing approximately \u20a92 trillion (approximately $1.4 billion), and its AI call agent “ixi-O.”<\/p>\n
While KT and LG Uplus lean toward direct investment in infrastructure and services, SK Telecom has sought to secure stakes in promising AI companies early to pursue both capital gains and business collaboration. Given that it made additional investments in Anthropic while partially divesting its MakinaRocks stake, the strategy can be interpreted as a “two-track” approach that combines additional investment in core companies with partial recovery of investment capital.<\/p>\n
The approach involves expanding investment in companies with high growth potential while recovering some capital from companies whose valuations have risen, then reinvesting in new AI companies. The goal is to create a cyclical structure of company discovery, investment, technology collaboration, recovery, and reinvestment.<\/p>\n
The key question is how deeply the technologies of portfolio companies can be integrated into A., AI data centers, enterprise AI, and other offerings to translate into actual revenue and profit. The ultimate value of this investment jackpot will be determined accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SK Telecom is proving the success of the most aggressive AI equity investment strategy among South Korean telecom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[4377,544,9651,36973,16460,2095,52816,35573,241,240,275,1364],"class_list":["post-132149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sk","tag-a","tag-ai-data-center","tag-anthropic","tag-k-ai-alliance","tag-kt","tag-lg-uplus","tag-makinarocks","tag-perplexity","tag-sk","tag-sk-group","tag-sk-hynix","tag-sk-telecom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}