According to regulatory filings, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has agreed to sell 972,493 shares of holding company SK Inc., representing a 1.34% stake, to DFO Public Investments, L.P. for 544 billion Korean won (approximately $406 million).
This fund is registered in Delaware, USA, and is affiliated with DFO Management—the family investment office of Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies Inc. (DELL.US). According to reports, DFO Management was formerly known as MSD Capital, founded by Michael Dell in 1998, and was renamed at the end of 2022.
This transaction is part of Chey Tae-won's personal financial arrangements. He plans to raise 944 billion Korean won (approximately $704 million) by selling SK Inc. shares to pay divorce compensation to his ex-wife Roh Soh-yeong, director of Art Center Nabi; of this, 681,431 shares (representing 0.94% of the company) will be sold to Korea Investment Securities for 400 billion Korean won.
When SK Inc. first disclosed the plan earlier this month, the buyer of the remaining shares was vaguely described as a "strategic investor," citing the counterparty's decision to invest after "considering SK Inc.'s business competitiveness and mid-to-long-term growth prospects." Wednesday's filing revealed the answer.
What Connects the Two Companies: Why Would an AI Server Manufacturer Buy into SK's Holding Company
What is intriguing is not the transaction itself, but who is buying. Dell Technologies is a major supplier of AI servers and data center infrastructure, while SK Inc. is the holding company of SK Group and the largest shareholder of the group's memory subsidiary SK hynix, forming a parent-subsidiary relationship.
The relationship between Dell and SK hynix is far more concrete than a single equity investment. According to SK hynix's official press releases, the company is a "core partner" of Dell and has participated in Dell Technologies Forum in Seoul for consecutive years since 2023; at DTF 2026 held on August 25, 2026, SK hynix delivered a keynote speech as a partner representative for the first time—Vice President Ju Young-pyo, in charge of system architecture, presented under the title "The Invisible Engine," proposing a "3D stacking" concept of directly stacking memory on top of GPUs, arguing that the stacking height of existing HBM alone is no longer sufficient to meet the surging data processing demands of agentic AI.
At the booth, SK hynix displayed physical HBM4 wafers alongside products including HBM4E, 192GB SOCAMM2, server DRAM, and enterprise SSDs (eSSD); in the "AI Reality" exhibition area, its 6400MT/s DDR5 RDIMM and PS1010 E3.S were integrated into Dell R770 server systems for public display.
Dell's scale on its side is equally considerable. Dell's fiscal year 2027 second quarter (ending July 31, 2026) revenue reached $46.97 billion, up 58% year-over-year; Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) revenue reached $31.78 billion, up 89% year-over-year, with operating margin rising to 15%. AI server orders in the quarter reached a record $60.9 billion, with quarter-end backlog of $95 billion—nearly double the $51.3 billion at the end of the previous quarter—and cumulative AI server orders over the past 12 months exceeding $130 billion.
Dell has raised its full-year revenue guidance to $192 billion and increased its fiscal year 2027 AI server revenue target from $60 billion to $74 billion. But what supports this order book is precisely memory. Dell management listed DRAM and NAND as major supply bottlenecks on the earnings call, with Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke stating bluntly that the company raised prices because of rising component costs including memory—in other words, Dell passed on memory price increases to customers, while what it itself needs is stable supply.
Supply Shortage Becomes Key: Tech Giants "Waving Money" at SK hynix
This supply anxiety did not appear suddenly. A May report stated that multiple large global tech companies are racing to approach SK hynix, proposing to invest in its dedicated memory chip production lines, or even fund the purchase of expensive manufacturing equipment. Six people familiar with the matter revealed that one proposal targets the first phase of SK hynix's large-scale wafer fab under construction at its Yongin campus in South Korea, which is expected to focus on DRAM production; another customer offered to fund the procurement of ASML (ASML.US) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, each valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. The report described such proposals as unprecedented in the global memory chip industry.
Yet cash-rich SK hynix remains cautious—two people familiar with the matter said the company worries that accepting funds from a specific buyer could bind it to that buyer and force it to supply at lower prices in exchange for longer-term revenue commitments. "Regardless of the form of the proposal, the currently available capacity is essentially zero. Not even a small portion can be allocated to a specific customer," one person familiar with the matter said. Another source noted that suppliers are extremely careful when allocating scarce capacity, not wanting to "bet on the wrong horse" in the AI race.
The way long-term contracts are negotiated is also changing. According to reports, one structure under discussion is a "price range mechanism," setting upper and lower limits for annual chip prices, thereby eliminating the practice of quarterly or seasonal price negotiations; another is a prepayment arrangement, requiring customers to pay 30% to 40% of the purchase price in advance.
SK hynix's Scale
The timing of Dell's family office move comes right after SK hynix's leap in scale. SK hynix launched temporary trading on Nasdaq on July 10, 2026, and converted to regular trading on July 13 under the ticker SKHY, issuing approximately 177.9 million ADSs at an offering price of $149, with first-day opening up about 14% from the offering price, raising a total of $26.5 billion—making it the largest IPO by a foreign company in the United States.
In terms of market share, according to IDC data cited in its prospectus, SK hynix held 56.4% HBM market share in the first quarter of 2026, while ranking as the world's second-largest DRAM supplier with 29.1% market share and second-largest NAND flash supplier with 18.5%. Notably, in May 2026, the market capitalizations of three memory manufacturers—Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and Micron—successively surpassed $1 trillion—the memory sector, long regarded as a cyclical industry, has been repriced by the market as a strategic link in AI infrastructure.
Governance Red Line: Regulatory Questions Raised by a "Strategic Investment"
Returning to the transaction itself, the trouble lies in the term "strategic investor." According to reports, the Korea Corporate Governance Forum pointed out that if Chey Tae-won and the buyer even informally agree to exercise voting rights in the same manner, both parties must legally disclose as joint holders, otherwise it violates South Korea's Capital Markets Act. The forum stated that the term "strategic investor" itself implies that the interests of both parties may be aligned, and the DFO fund risks being classified as a "person acting in concert" with Chey Tae-won.
According to reports, the forum also proposed in a commentary on October 6 that this share sale needs clarification on whether it is intended to circumvent an enhanced 3% rule that will take effect at next year's shareholders' meeting. According to the same report, the portion of shares sold to Korea Investment Securities carries a three-year price return swap (PRS) arrangement—settled at maturity based on the difference between the actual disposal price and the agreed reference price, meaning Chey Tae-won can benefit from stock price increases but also bears losses from declines.
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