HANMI Semiconductor said on the 15th it will invest 50 billion won to acquire equity in Elon Musk's SpaceX. It is unusual for a semiconductor equipment specialist to make a large direct investment in an unlisted space company.
The core of this investment is the view that SpaceX is transforming from a simple space company into a key infrastructure company for the AI era. Through its satellite communications service Starlink, SpaceX is rapidly gaining ground in the global network infrastructure market, while also emerging as a key demand destination for Musk's "Terafab" project, an ultra-large semiconductor manufacturing facility under development.
Terafab, valued at $119 billion (about 177 trillion won), is scheduled to be built in Austin, Texas, with a target start of operations in 2028. About 80% of the semiconductors produced will be supplied to SpaceX's aerospace operations and data centers, with the remainder going into Tesla's Autonomous Driving cars and the Humanoid Robot "Optimus." HANMI Semiconductor's investment is seen as a preemptive move to enter the Terafab ecosystem early.
Behind the investment is the long-standing connection between Chair Gwak Dong-shin and Palantir founder Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel, a key Silicon Valley figure who co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk, was also an early investor in SpaceX, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
The two trace their ties back to 2013. Crescendo Equity Partners, a global private equity firm backed by Peter Thiel, became the first among Korean corporations to invest in HANMI Semiconductor, creating a point of contact with Gwak. In 2021, HANMI Semiconductor and Gwak each invested 37.5 billion won, totaling 75 billion won, in semiconductor equipment company HPSP, achieving a 639.3% return on principal and cumulative revenue of 479.5 billion won. In 2024, Gwak personally invested 31 billion won in "Line Next," a global Web3 company affiliated with Line Yahoo, securing 8.5% equity and continuing their collaboration.
A HANMI Semiconductor official said, "We decided to invest in SpaceX in step with the trend of the AI industry expanding beyond semiconductors and data centers into aerospace and satellite communications data," and added, "We will reinvest future revenue in the semiconductor equipment business to pursue sustainable growth and enhanced shareholder value at the same time."