SK Square (402340) announced on the 23rd that it has invested in Hammerspace, a U.S. company with core artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, through its overseas investment subsidiary TGC Square. With this investment, the company has completed approximately 30 billion won in cumulative investments across seven AI and semiconductor companies in the high-growth U.S. and Japanese markets. SK Square plans to invest a total of 100 billion won in promising companies in related sectors going forward.
Hammerspace is a California-based automated data orchestration platform company that has secured major clients including Meta and the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory. Data orchestration is a technology that logically combines data scattered across various systems worldwide, enabling integrated operations as if in a single local environment. It is considered an essential solution for maximizing semiconductor performance in the AI era.
SK Square has been identifying high-growth global companies from their early stages. This approach positions the company to secure follow-on investment opportunities and generate additional returns through initial public offerings (IPOs) within several years. In fact, U.S.-based D-Matrix, which SK Square invested in during the second half of 2023, saw its valuation increase to over $2 billion (approximately 3 trillion won) after completing Series C funding late last year—a more than seven-fold increase from the time of investment. Tetramem, a U.S. company developing next-generation AI chips, is also expected to see its valuation roughly double from $450 million in a new funding round scheduled for this year.
Based on these results, SK Square has demonstrated its global investment acumen. The company recently strengthened its investment expertise through organizational restructuring. SK Square's headquarters transformed its existing CIO/Portfolio Management organization into the Strategic Investment Center to enhance global investment execution capabilities, while TGC Square recruited Ahn Hong-ik as Chief Investment Officer (CIO), who has experience overseeing overseas investment operations at global asset management firms. "We will continue to discover and invest in promising global AI and semiconductor technology companies through TGC Square as part of our efforts to secure preemptive market intelligence," said Kim Jung-kyu, President of SK Square.