SK Square said on Feb. 23 it made an investment in U.S. company Hammerspace, which has a solution for data bottlenecks in the AI era, through its overseas investment unit TGC Square.

Hammerspace is an automated data orchestration platform company based in California. Major clients include Meta and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Data orchestration is a technology that logically combines data scattered across systems for integrated operation. It is used to address bottlenecks that occur when AI loads data.

SK Square has continued to invest in global AI and semiconductor companies. It has invested a cumulative 30 billion won in 7 AI and semiconductor technology companies in countries including the United States and Japan, which it said have strong growth potential. SK Square plans to expand investments in related promising companies to 100 billion won.

As an example, U.S. company D-Matrix, which SK Square invested in in the second half of 2023, raised Series C funding late last year, lifting its valuation to at least $2 billion, or about 2.88 trillion won. SK Square said the valuation has risen more than sevenfold from the time of investment.

U.S. AI chip maker Tetramem is expected to see its valuation more than double in a new funding round scheduled for this year, from $450 million, or about 648.5 billion won. This follows Tetramem's high-speed, low-power AI securing a position in the market as demand for edge AI such as AR, VR and smart cameras increases.

Japan's Kyulux, which holds next-generation organic light-emitting diode (OLED) patents, is recently pursuing product supplies to large domestic and overseas display companies. Japan's iocore is supplying prototypes to potential clients in autonomous driving, medical devices and aerospace. iocore develops an "optical communication module" that replaces existing semiconductor copper wiring with a photonic (laser) connection method.

Japan's Link-US is conducting technology verification with multiple major South Korean secondary battery manufacturing companies. Link-US develops "ultrasonic composite vibration bonding equipment" that achieves high-strength, low-damage bonding compared with existing technologies when joining metals.

U.S. company NuMat Technologies, which SK Square invested in last year, is the only company in the world to successfully apply metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to areas including semiconductors and defence, and achieve mass production and commercialisation.

TGC Square has recruited Chief Investment Officer Hong-ik Ahn (안홍익), who has experience leading overseas investment operations at a global asset manager. SK Square also changed its existing CIO and portfolio management organisation into a strategic investment centre to strengthen its ability to execute global investments.

SK Square CEO Jeong-gyu Kim (김정규) said, "To secure proactive market intelligence, we will continue to discover promising global AI and semiconductor technology companies through TGC Square and continue investing."