Hanmi Semiconductor Vice Chairman Gwak Dong-shin Invests 31 Billion Won in 'Line Next'

Kwak Dong-shin, Vice Chairman and CEO of Hanmi Semiconductor, announced on the 13th that he personally invested 31 billion KRW in the 180 billion KRW-scale ‘Line Next’ investment consortium led by Crescendo Equity Partners, securing an 8.5% stake.

Line Next is a LY (Line Yahoo) affiliate company focusing on developing an NFT platform and global Web3 business. In December last year, Crescendo, funded by Peter Thiel, the founder of Paypal and an investor, secured $140 million (approximately 180 billion KRW) to build the Web3 ecosystem and develop new services for global business expansion.

Earlier, in June 2021, Kwak Dong-shin personally invested 37.5 billion KRW in HPSP, a semiconductor front-end equipment company operated by Presto Fund created by Crescendo, securing a 12.5% stake. After HPSP went public in July 2022, its market capitalization rose to the 50 trillion KRW level, generating over 300 billion KRW in personal profits.

Vice Chairman Kwak decided on this investment, recognizing the growth potential of the blockchain-based NFT market alongside the expansion of the Web3 environment.

Kwak Dong-shin, the largest shareholder and CEO of Hanmi Semiconductor, was ranked 8th among Korea’s top 50 richest people (with $3.9 billion) last month by Forbes, a U.S. economic magazine, thanks to the growth of Hanmi Semiconductor’s TC Bonder?an essential process equipment for AI semiconductor HBM with the world’s number one market share?along with the rise in Hanmi Semiconductor’s market capitalization and profits from the HPSP investment.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.