0
SK Telecom CEO Jeong Jae-heon speaks at a press conference held at NTT's headquarters in Tokyo in June. / Yonhap

SK Telecom's stake in U.S. AI company Anthropic has now surpassed 3.5 trillion won in value, having grown by more than 2 trillion won in just half a year amid Anthropic's rising corporate valuation. SK Telecom continues to strengthen its "AI alliance" with Anthropic through ongoing investment and expanding cooperation on AI data centers.

According to SK Telecom on the 14th, the company recently acquired an additional 157,189 shares of Anthropic for 139.9 billion won. This brings SK Telecom's total Anthropic holdings to 3,860,330 shares, with a book value of 3.505 trillion won — up from 1.3762 trillion won last December, an increase of 2.1288 trillion won in just six months.

This largely reflects the rapid rise in Anthropic's valuation. Anthropic raised a large funding round in May, at a valuation of $965 billion (about 1,364 trillion won) — more than five times its $183 billion (about 258 trillion won) valuation during its September funding round last year.

Against this backdrop, SK Telecom's decision to make an additional investment in Anthropic is seen as significant, reflecting a judgment to sustain the strategic relationship rather than simply cash in on paper gains.

SK Telecom CEO Jeong Jae-heon said in Tokyo, Japan in June that regarding the additional investment in Anthropic, the company judged it better to continue investing since it plans to maintain the partnership rather than focus on returns, adding there are no immediate plans to sell the stake given the ongoing areas of cooperation with Anthropic.

Indeed, SK Telecom appears to be expanding its cooperation with Anthropic. The relationship began in 2023 with the joint development of a large language model (LLM) specialized for telecom services, and has since broadened, including a comprehensive memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed last month for building a gigawatt (GW)-scale AI data center in Korea.

SK Telecom currently serves as the central player in the group's AI business, having announced plans to gradually bring a first-phase, 5GW AI data center online starting in 2029, expanding to a total of 15GW by 2035.

Since securing demand from AI companies that use large-scale computing resources is directly tied to business competitiveness, the relationship with Anthropic naturally carries significant weight for SK Telecom. Looking at the book value of SK Telecom's investments in other companies, Anthropic's stake accounts for about 33% of the total 10.5862 trillion won.

An SK Telecom official said the acquisition of Anthropic shares is aimed at strengthening the partnership, adding that the company will continue building out its AI ecosystem.

                                                                                                              Choi In-gyu