[Photo] T Tower, Head Office of SK Square

- SK Square executed investment in ’Hammerspace,’ an AI data platform provider based in the US, which secured top-tier customers including Meta.

- SK Square completed an investment of KRW 30 billion, out of a total of KRW 100 billion worth of investment plan, in seven promising AI and semiconductor companies in the US and Japan. 

- With proven investment foresight, SK Square has seen a significant rise in the value of its invested companies including ‘d-Matrix’ and ‘TetraMem.’

- SK Square plans to continue investment to secure market intelligence, while refining its organization to strengthen the global investment execution capabilities.

SK Square announced that it invested in ‘Hammerspace,’ an American company offering high-performance data platform with automated data orchestration to resolve data bottlenecks in the era of AI, through TGC Square, its overseas investment subsidiary.

SK Square completed an investment of around KRW 30 billion in seven promising AI and semiconductor companies based in the US and Japan. This is part of the KRW 100 billion worth of investment.

SK Square has also delivered visible investment performance in the overseas market. The global AI and semiconductor companies invested by SK Square were recognized for a sharp increase in their corporate value in the follow-on investment rounds.

SK Square has recently invested in Hammerspace, a high-performance data platform and automated data orchestration provider based in California, US.

 Data orchestration is a technology that logically combines and manages siloed data at different locations across the world in an integrated manner, with access just like in a local environment. It also moves data to available GPUs and alternates storage locations without interrupting user and application access to the data. It orchestrates the flow of data just like a conductor who leads an orchestra. It is regarded as a critical technology for fully unleashing semiconductor performance in the era of AI.

Data bottlenecks and fragmentation have emerged as a new constraint in the recent advancement of AI infrastructure. Data centers consist of compute servers responsible for processing (CPU, GPU) and storage servers that store data, and actual computation is performed only when compute servers issue commands to retrieve data from storage servers through the data network.

Bottlenecks arise when retrieving data distributed across multiple systems, and Hammerspace is considered to have the technological expertise to resolve this challenge. Based on this technology, Hammerspace secured major customers including Meta, and Los Alamos National Lab.

Much of the technical strength of Hammerspace is attributed to David Flynn, the CEO and founder of the company. As the pioneer of the world’s first PCIe*-based flash SSD, Flynn is called the ‘guru’ in the memory industry. Flynn had founded ‘Fusion IO’, a company with NAND flash technology, and sold the company to SanDisk for USD 1.1 billion (KRW 1.6 trillion).

※PCIe(Peripheral Component Interconnect express): As a precursor to NVMe(Non-Volatile Memory Express), PCLe is a high-speed standard communication interface that connects CPUs with GPUs, SSDs, and other devices.

As an example, ‘d-Matrix (US)’ invested by SK Square in the second half of 2023 raised Series C funding at the end of 2025, which helped increase its corporate value to over USD 2 billion (KRW 3 trillion.) It means that the company’s valuation has risen more than sevenfold since the investment by SK Square. ‘d-Matrix’ is a leading AI inference chip maker whose major shareholders include Microsoft and Temasek, a state-owned investment company in Singapore. 

‘TetraMem,’ a ReRAM*-based AI chip maker (US), has also been on a strong growth trajectory. The company expects its corporate value to double from USD 450 million(KRW 650 billion) in the new investment round scheduled in 2026. This is attributable to TetraMem’s strong position in the market to deliver low-power, high-speed AI solutions to meet the growing demand from edge AI applications such as AR, VR, and smart cameras. 

※ReRAM: As a next-generation technology, ReRAM stores and reads data by changing the resistance of a material. 

‘Kyulux (Japan)’ and ‘AIOCORE (Japan)’ have also seen a steady increase in their corporate value through additional investment rounds since the investment by SK Square. With a patent for the next-generation OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) technology, Kyulux is driving efforts to supply its products to Korean and large global display companies. OLED display technology combined with semiconductors has become more important with the expansion of ‘semiconductor-display integrated System-on- Chip(SoC)*’ market.

 ※SoC: A technology that integrates semiconductor functions(CPU, GPU, memory) required to run a display into a single microchip and thereby implements both display and semiconductor functions

AIOCORE is currently providing evaluation samples to potential customers as part of its market development activities for autonomous driving, medical, and aerospace applications. AIOCORE is an innovative company developing optical communication modules that replace the existing copper wires for semiconductors to enable photonic(laser) access.

‘LINK-US (Japan)’ is carrying out technology verification with multiple major Korean producers of secondary batteries, while also collaborating with key manufacturing companies based in Japan and China. LINK-US is the leading provider of ultrasonic complex vibration bonders that enable high-efficiency, low-damage metal bonding. LINK-US is expanding its business across the global market while demonstrating higher quality and strength compared to the existing bonding technologies, especially in the bonding process for automobile bat-tery and power semiconductor.

Meanwhile, ‘Numat Technologies (US)’ a US advanced materials company invested by SK Square in 2025, is emerging as a breakout player in the field of MOF(Metal-Organic Framework)*. MOF has gained strong momentum in the materials market, as the professors leading research on MOF were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2025. Numat is the only company in the world to have successfully scaled and commercialized MOFs into the semiconductor, industrial and defense sectors, building a leading industrial base for this transformative material technology platform.

※MOF: Advanced porous materials composed of metal ions and organic molecules, enabling a wide range of industrial applications including gas separation, storage, and purification.

These investment achievements are attributed to SK Square’s global investment foresight. The company has recently strengthened its investment expertise by refining its organization. 

TGC Square has appointed Ahn Hongig as CIO (Chief Investment Officer), who has proven experience in leading overseas investment activities at a global asset management company. SK Square also reinforced its global investment execution capabilities by changing the existing CIO/Portfolio Management Organization into Strategic Investment Center. 

SK Square plans to explore investment opportunities this year, with a focus on semiconductor value chains along with promising AI infrastructure and technologies to address AI data bottlenecks. 

“We aim to secure market intelligence this year, by making proactive efforts such as continuously exploring global AI and semiconductor companies through TGC Square,” said Kim Jungkyu, the CEO of SK Square.