SK Telecom jumped more than 5% early on the 20th, hitting a 1-year high. The move is seen as driven by growing attention to the possibility of a revaluation of U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) corporations Anthropic, in which SK Telecom invested.
As of 10:12 a.m., SK Telecom was trading at 61,700 won on the Korea Exchange, up 2,500 won (4.22%) from the previous session. Early in the session, it rose to 63,000 won, marking a 1-year high.
Anthropic is a Generative AI corporations founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers that developed the large language model (LLM) "Claude." In a recent pre-IPO round, it reportedly raised $25 billion after being valued at about $350 billion.
SK Telecom invested $100 million in Anthropic, and as of the semiannual report for the first half of last year, its equity stake was 0.7%.
Kim Jeong-chan, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities Co., said, "As of the semiannual report for the first half of last year, SK Telecom's equity stake in Anthropic was 0.7%, with a book value of 192.5 billion won," and noted, "Although the stake is expected to be diluted to 0.58% in subsequent investment rounds, considering the sharp rise in Anthropic's corporate value, the value of the holding is estimated at about 3 trillion won."