SK Telecom (SKM) – A Stake Worth Monitoring
SK Telecom (SKM) is currently running a 93% Bullish Skew in our JaguarFlow dashboard. You can see from the screenshot below that since early July, we’ve seen buyers out in January (2027) as well as more near-term in September.
In my opinion, there are two catalysts for this company that are worth monitoring. First off, in late-July, the company announced that the Board of Directors approved the establishment of “SK Hyper,” a new company dedicated to AI data center business development, along with an investment of W750B by 2030 to lay the groundwork for the business. According to the company, SK Hyper will be responsible for SKT’s AIDC business, with the previously announced plan of a phased opening of 5GW of AIDC capacity in 2029 as the first phase, with a long-term plan to commence sequential expansion toward a total capacity of 15GW in 2035. It will be securing sites, constructing and operating substations, acquiring customers, and commercializing the AIDC business.
Next up was a catalyst that our Hidden Angles dashboard first picked up on: Anthropic.
As a background, back in August 2023, SK Telecom announced that it was investing an additional $100M in Anthropic. This followed a previous investment from SK Telecom Venture Capital, the Silicon Valley-based venture capital arm. It was entering into a partnership agreement with Anthropic to build a large language model (LLM) customized for telcos.
Fast forward roughly 3 years later and TelcoDR would write on June 15th, 2026:
“In August 2023, SKT wrote $100 million for equity in Anthropic at a $5 billion valuation. In early June 2026, Anthropic filed its S-1 to prepare for an initial public offering, and its most recent private round valued the company at nearly $1 trillion. SKT’s stake is now worth somewhere between $1 billion and $2.6 billion—a 10x to 26x return in under three years.”
Just over a week ago, The Financial Times reported that Anthropic investors expect the company to go public in October at a valuation of $2 trillion or more, which would make it the largest initial public offering in history.
BofA analyst Sun Jung Lee was out on August 6th saying, “We value SKT’s stake in Anthropic at W1.7tn, on the latest funding (US$965bn) and a 50% NAV discount (Korea holdcos’ average)…Upside risks: (1) potential monetization of SKT’s stake in Anthropic at a higher value; (2) announcement on a data center project with a new customer; and (3) higher-than-expected earnings from SK Hyper.”
