SK Telecom Co. Ltd. (SKM) stock jumped nearly 4% in Monday premarket trading, catching a lift from improving investor sentiment and a broader tech rally. The South Korean wireless carrier gained 3.87% to $38.89 before the opening bell, while Nasdaq futures climbed 1.34% and S&P 500 futures advanced 0.64% — a classic risk-on start to the week.
But the real news came over the weekend. On Sunday, NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) and SK Telecom announced plans to build a gigawatt-scale AI cloud in South Korea using NVIDIA's DSX platform. The first AI factory is expected to begin operations in 2027. This isn't just a small data center — we're talking about a massive infrastructure project designed to support sovereign AI, enterprise workloads, physical AI, and agentic AI services across the country.
The two companies are also expanding their partnership to jointly research next-generation AI factory architectures and AI infrastructure technologies. And SK Telecom is joining NVIDIA's Cloud Partner program, which should give it deeper access to NVIDIA's ecosystem.
From a technical perspective, SKM looks pretty healthy. The stock is trading above its 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day simple moving averages, and a bullish "golden cross" formed back in February when the 50-day average crossed above the 200-day average. That's usually a sign that the trend is your friend.
That said, the shares have recently entered a consolidation phase after hitting a 52-week high in June. The stock is trading slightly below its 20-day moving average, and its relative strength index sits at 46.83 — neutral territory, not overbought or oversold. Traders are watching the $40 level as key resistance, while support is around $36, near the 50-day moving average where buyers have stepped in before.
So the big picture: SK Telecom is hitching its wagon to NVIDIA's AI train, and the market seems to like it. The real payoff won't come until 2027, but the story is already moving the stock.
