Samsung Electronics and SK hynix to Invest Trillions of Won in Anthropic... "K-memory Emerges as a Strategic Partner in the AI Ecosystem"

[Financial News] Samsung Electronics and SK hynix will make a multitrillion-won equity investment in U.S. AI company Anthropic. The move is drawing attention as a sign that Korean memory chipmakers have established themselves as key partners in AI agent infrastructure.
According to industry sources on the 31st, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix recently joined Anthropic's investment round, with Samsung Electronics' solo investment reportedly reaching several trillion won. Among the three memory chipmakers, including Micron, Samsung Electronics contributed the largest amount.
Anthropic said on the 28th that it raised $65 billion in its Series H round. The company's post-money valuation was set at $965 billion. The three memory chipmakers, including Samsung and SK, were listed in the round as strategic infrastructure partners. Anthropic said, "Their technology plays a critical role in supplying memory, storage, and logic chips around the world."
The investment appears to go beyond a simple financial stake and is more closely tied to business cooperation. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are expected to supply high bandwidth memory (HBM) for the data center infrastructure Anthropic is building. Samsung Electronics also plans to continue working with Anthropic across the semiconductor value chain, including memory, foundry, and packaging. Anthropic's mention of "logic chips" in its statement has also fueled speculation that Samsung Electronics may produce chips used in Anthropic's AI models.
Anthropic is also accelerating its efforts to build out computing infrastructure. It has signed a deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to secure up to 5 GW of data center capacity, and agreed with Google and Broadcom Inc. to build 5 GW of computing infrastructure based on next-generation Tensor Processing Units (TPU). Google reportedly participated in the round with billions of dollars, while AWS invested $5 billion.
The two companies can also expect investment returns. Anthropic's annualized revenue had surpassed $47 billion as of early this month. Samsung Electronics previously bought about 700 billion won worth of ASML Holding N.V. (ASML) shares in 2012 and later realized roughly eightfold returns through phased sales.
eastcold@fnnews.com Kim Dong-chan Reporter