SGH Announces $200M Strategic Investment from SK Telecom to Advance End-to-End AI Infrastructure Solutions

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SMART Global Holdings, Inc. (SGH), a leading designer and developer of high-performance, high-availability enterprise solutions, today announced that SK Telecom (SKT), an affiliate of SK Group, is making a $200 million preferred equity investment in SGH. SGH plans to use the capital from SKT’s investment to enhance SGH’s capabilities and add to the Company’s financial flexibility as SGH further expands the scope and scale of its Penguin Solutions branded end-to-end AI factory offerings.

“Today’s announcement is a testament to Penguin Solutions’ capabilities in the deployment of AI factories at scale through our systems, software, and managed services suite of solutions. We look forward to executing on strategic collaboration opportunities with the SKT team and believe they will create value for our respective stakeholders.”

SKT and SGH also intend to leverage their complementary capabilities to enhance customer offerings in the development of differentiated global end-to-end AI factory and data center solutions and services, advanced memory market products and services, and NPU-based AI edge servers.

“We are thrilled to have SKT as a strategic investor,” said Mark Adams, CEO of SGH. “Today’s announcement is a testament to Penguin Solutions’ capabilities in the deployment of AI factories at scale through our systems, software, and managed services suite of solutions. We look forward to executing on strategic collaboration opportunities with the SKT team and believe they will create value for our respective stakeholders.”

Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT added, “SGH and Penguin Solutions have a proven methodology to deploy their AI infrastructure solutions at some of the most innovative and demanding large-scale enterprise customers in the world. We believe that this collaboration leveraging SKT's vast technology portfolio with Penguin's AI data center solutions would enhance the reach and capabilities of both companies and position them to continue innovating in their fields.”

Penguin Solutions has demonstrated its premier technology position through the development and deployment of innovative AI-driven technologies, such as high-performance and high-availability systems design, fluid-based immersion cooling, “zero fail” memory solutions, end-to-end managed services offerings, and its AI cluster management software suite. Penguin Solutions presently has over 75,000 GPUs under management, among the most in the world.

SKT’s current AI-related investments and partnerships include Anthropic, Lambda, and Perplexity. Along with these investments, a partnership and investment with SGH will advance SKT’s goals in the AI value chain across these three pillars: AI semiconductor, AI infrastructure and AI services.

Terms of the Preferred Equity Investment

SKT will invest $200 million in SGH by acquiring 200,000 preferred shares. The 200,000 preferred shares are convertible into ordinary shares of SGH at a conversion price of $32.81 per preferred share, subject to adjustment upon the occurrence of certain events. The initial conversion rate is based on a 30% premium to the volume-weighted average closing price of SGH ordinary shares over the 15-day period ending on July 12, 2024. The preferred shares are entitled to a 6% annual dividend, payable in-kind or in cash, at SGH’s option. SGH also has certain redemption rights with respect to the preferred shares.

Consummation of this investment is subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions. SGH currently expects the investment to close by the end of 2024.