Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both joined Anthropic's USD 65 billion Series H funding round as strategic infrastructure partners, the companies confirmed on June 1, the same day the U.S. AI lab filed a confidential IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The investment, which also included Micron Technology, pushed Anthropic's post-money valuation to USD 965 billion — surpassing rival OpenAI's USD 852 billion mark and making the Claude developer the world's most valuable privately held AI company. A public debut above the USD 1 trillion threshold is increasingly viewed as the base-case scenario by investment bankers if market conditions hold.
In a statement, Anthropic said the three chipmakers "play a key role in the global supply of memory, storage, and logic chips," underscoring the strategic dimension of the tie-up. Analysts note that the collaboration with Samsung may extend to foundry manufacturing beyond memory procurement, while SK Hynix is seen as securing a first-mover advantage in next-generation AI memory specifications — a critical edge as demand for high-bandwidth memory continues to surge.
SK Telecom's Windfall in the Making
The filing also reignites attention on SK Telecom's earlier bet. The telecom group invested roughly USD 100 million in Anthropic in 2023, when the company was valued at just USD 5 billion, forging both a financial stake and a strategic partnership to develop large language models customized for telecommunications. Through successive funding rounds, SK Telecom's equity has been diluted to an estimated 0.3–0.7% of Anthropic.
That slice, booked at approximately KRW 1.3 trillion (roughly USD 970 million) on the company's balance sheet, could revalue to the KRW 3 trillion-plus range (about USD 2.6 billion) if Anthropic completes its IPO at or near the current valuation, according to analyst estimates cited by Seoul Economic Daily. SK Telecom stock surged 12% earlier this year as analysts began factoring in the potential re-rating.
Anthropic's Financials Support the Valuation
Anthropic said its annualized revenue had surpassed USD 47 billion as of late May 2026 and the company is on track to post its first operating profit in the second quarter — metrics that bankers say justify the near-trillion-dollar price tag. The company's valuation now tops OpenAI (USD 852 billion) by more than USD 100 billion, a reversal that reflects Anthropic's accelerating commercial momentum.
The confidential S-1 positions Anthropic for a public offering as early as October 2026, according to sources familiar with the timeline. The listing would rank among the largest technology IPOs in history.
The Broader AI Capital Supercycle
The Anthropic round arrives the same week Alphabet announced an USD 80 billion equity capital raise — the largest equity capital markets transaction on record, eclipsing Petrobras' roughly USD 70 billion offering in 2010. Alphabet is channeling the proceeds into AI compute infrastructure, with Berkshire Hathaway acquiring USD 10 billion of stock in a private placement.
For Korea's semiconductor champions, the Series H investment is less a passive bet and more a seat at the AI infrastructure table. As Anthropic scales its compute and memory requirements toward its first profitable quarter, Samsung and SK Hynix are positioned to capture chip demand that flows directly from the company's model training and inference operations — reinforcing Korea's role as the memory backbone of the global AI economy.
Sources: Korea Herald, TechCrunch, Fortune, NPR, Bloomberg, UPI, en.sedaily.com, SmartKarma
