SK Telecom could be a really good play heading into Anthropic's IPO. x.com 

SK Telecom offers a buried Anthropic stake priced like a utility. The stake sits on its balance sheet at cost, and Anthropic's confidential IPO filing on June 1, targeting the second half, should force the market to mark it. Per @michaelsikand, SK Telecom has four times the next-best Anthropic exposure per dollar of market cap, and its core telco trades near 6.1x EV/EBITDA. It is still a proxy: foreign-listed, prone to conglomerate discounts, with a stake that is hard to mark precisely. x.com 

SK Telecom shareholders may never see much of its Anthropic upside, because SKM sits inside the SK Group chaebol, run by a Chey family that favors the group over public holders. Proceeds could leak to affiliates through inflated intercompany contracts or be steered into group priorities, and Chairman Chey Tae-won's $1.1 billion divorce settlement gives him reason to keep value inside the group. ADR holders have no board seats, meaningful votes, real legal recourse or binding dividend policy. … Show more

An Anthropic IPO would force a market value onto SK Telecom's stake, which sits on its balance sheet at book value. SK Telecom invested $100M in 2023 at a $5B valuation and still holds roughly 0.3%, worth about $3B at a $1 trillion Anthropic against SK Telecom's roughly $15B market cap. If higher rumored valuations land, the stake becomes a meaningful fraction of the company, offering Anthropic exposure retail cannot otherwise buy, priced like a telco. x.com 

SK Telecom is a better Anthropic proxy than Zoom, and the pair favors owning SK Telecom over Zoom. Per a post the author replies to, SK Telecom owns about 1.07% of Anthropic versus about 0.6% for Zoom after dilution. Zoom's core business could be in real jeopardy, while SK Telecom's Korean franchise could benefit as it moves into gigawatt-scale data centers for hyperscalers. SK Telecom also pays a 3-4% dividend yield, unlike typical multi-layer SPVs that cost holders money. x.com 

SK Telecom combines a data center business, a stake in Anthropic and the potential turnaround of its legacy telecom business. x.com 

SK Telecom is a Korean telecom with a free AI lottery ticket in its Anthropic stake, which the market hasn't priced. It invested $100M at a $5B valuation in August 2023; its roughly 0.5% stake is worth about $2B at Anthropic's $380B Series G mark, 14% of SK Telecom's $14.5B market cap. At a $1T Anthropic IPO valuation, the stake would be worth $5B, or 40% of the market cap. WSJ reports Anthropic's next round at $900B, with an IPO reportedly targeted for Q4 2026. x.com  x.com 

SK Telecom is becoming Anthropic's Korean infrastructure partner, not just a holder of an Anthropic stake. Its $100 million 2023 investment is worth an estimated $2.7 billion, about 19% of its market cap, before any Anthropic IPO rerating. CEO Jung Jae-heon said SKT joined the Series H, won't sell, and that Anthropic is discussing compute with SKT. It joined Project Glasswing, and its gigawatt-scale Nvidia AI cloud starts in 2027. It trades at 6.1x EV/EBITDA versus 7.5-9x for Western peers. … Show more

SK Telecom is a far cheaper way to own Anthropic than the Fundrise Innovation Fund. SK Telecom's $100M 2023 stake is estimated at about $2B, roughly 15–20% of its market cap, inside a cash-flowing Korean telecom with a 3–4% dividend that gives it a floor. VCX ran from $31 to $380 in a month against an $18.97 NAV, so Anthropic is only about 1.5% of its value; a reversion toward NAV would be a 90%+ drawdown even if Anthropic performs. The pair runs to January 2027. x.com  x.com  x.com 

SK Telecom's drop looks unjustified because it came alongside genuinely positive news: it is joining Anthropic's restricted Project Glasswing to co-develop AI security systems using the Claude Mythos model. The 12% fall, alongside LG and Samsung SDS, reflected broad profit-taking on Korean AI names ahead of Jensen Huang's Korea visit and after Broadcom's earnings, not company-specific problems. x.com