Hanmi Semiconductor Eyes SpaceX Stake Ahead of Nasdaq IPO

Hanmi Semiconductor is also involved in the big SpaceX vortex. Citing a Yonhap report, Friday, June 12, the South Korean semiconductor equipment company plans to buy SpaceX shares worth 50 billion won or about US$32.9 million ahead of the debut of Elon Musk's space company on the Nasdaq exchange.

The plan was announced by Hanmi Semiconductor in an information disclosure on Friday. The investment is equivalent to about 7.24 percent of equity, referring to the portion of the investment value in the company's report.

Hanmi sees great opportunities from SpaceX and Terrafab, Musk-led integrated chip manufacturing projects. Semiconductors or chips are the main components used to process data in electronic devices, data centers, electric vehicles, to AI systems.

Terrafab is a chip production complex involving Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. The facility is expected to start operating in 2028.

According to documents quoted by Yonhap, about 80 percent of the chips from Terrafab will be used for SpaceX data centers. The rest will be installed on Tesla vehicles and Optimus robots.

For Hanmi, this investment is not just buying shares of a popular company. SpaceX is now in the middle of a meeting of three major industries: space, AI, and semiconductors.

"We will reinvest the expected future returns into our semiconductor equipment core business to pursue sustainable growth, while increasing shareholder value," a Hanmi Semiconductor official was quoted as saying by Yonhap.

SpaceX is scheduled to list on the Nasdaq on Friday US time. An IPO, or initial public offering, is the process when a company first sells its shares to the public on an exchange.

SpaceX's IPO price was set at US$135 per share, with an estimated market capitalization of around US$1.8 trillion. Market capitalization is the value of a company on the exchange based on the share price multiplied by the number of outstanding shares.

Hanmi's move shows how semiconductor equipment businesses are looking for opportunities from Musk's SpaceX, Terrafab, AI, and satellite ecosystems.