SK Telecom Co. mentioned on Tuesday it has agreed to take a position $200 million in SMART Global Holdings Inc. (SGH), a US synthetic intelligence cluster builder, in its largest-ever funding in an AI firm to enterprise into the worldwide AI infrastructure market.
Beneath the phrases of the settlement, SK Telecom will purchase 200,000 most well-liked shares in SGH for $200 million. They’re convertible into SGH’s abnormal shares at $32.81 per most well-liked share, which is able to translate into a ten% stake in the Nasdaq-listed firm.
Based mostly in Silicon Valley, SGH designs, builds and operates AI clusters consisting of large-scale graphic processing unit (GPU) servers for corporations reminiscent of Meta Platforms Inc. Its income got here in at $1.44 billion in 2023.
AI clustering refers back to the machine studying course of.
SK Telecom, a sister firm of the world’s No. 2 reminiscence chipmaker SK Hynix Inc., has been accelerating its transformation into a global AI company with a give attention to three pillars: AI semiconductor, AI infrastructure and GPU-based AI companies.
In 2023, SK Telecom invested $100 million in Anthropic, a generative massive language mannequin (LLM) developer to create a Korea language-based LLM, adopted by $20 million investment in Lambda, a GPU cloud supplier as a service, in February 2024. Final month, it injected $10 million into Perplexity AI, a generative AI search engine startup.
SGH gives specialised platforms and companies for high-performance computing AI, machine studying and the Web of Issues optimized for generative LLM.
“We’re thrilled to have SKT as a strategic investor,” Mark Adams, chief govt of SGH, mentioned in a press release launched by SK Telecom.
“Right now’s announcement is a testomony to Penguin Options’ capabilities in the deployment of AI factories at scale by our methods, software program and managed companies suite of options. We sit up for executing on these strategic collaboration alternatives with the SKT staff and consider they’ll create worth for our respective stakeholders.”
Penguin Options seek advice from its built-in AI information heart companies starting from the design of AI clusters consisting of large-scale GPU servers to information heart deployment and operation.
“Our funding in and cooperation with SGH will give us a chance to spice up our place in the AI worth chain,” mentioned Ryu Younger-sang, chief govt of SKT.
“Within the period of AI transformation, we plan to proceed to collaborate and make proactive investments to realize world management in AI,” he added.
SK Telecom additionally expects the upcoming merger between Rebellions, a semiconductor fabless startup and Sapeon Korea Inc., an AI chip producer, to beef up its AI semiconductor enterprise. SK Hynix is a serious shareholder of Sapeon.
Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leesw@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this text