Three Samsung affiliates agreed on Thursday, May 28, to jointly acquire a combined 4% stake in Dunamu — the operator of South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit — from Kakao affiliates for 612.8 billion won (approximately $408 million), according to a regulatory filing on the DART exchange disclosure system and reporting by the Korea Herald.
The deal splits as follows: Samsung Securities takes a 2% stake for 306 billion won; Samsung SDS and Samsung Card each take 1%. All three transactions are structured as all-cash block sales and are scheduled to close June 19. The sellers are four Kakao-linked entities — Kakao Investment, Kakao Ventures, the Kakao Youth Entrepreneurship Fund, and the KIF-Kakao Woori Bank Technology Finance Investment Fund — each fully exiting their Dunamu positions.
The transaction is the third major Dunamu stake sale by Kakao affiliates in under 30 days. Earlier this month, Hana Bank agreed to acquire roughly a 6.55% stake for approximately 1 trillion won (~$670 million). That was followed by a 600 billion won sale to Hanwha Investment and Securities. Combined with Thursday's deal, Kakao has divested roughly $1.5 billion of Dunamu equity in a single month.
Kakao's exit is strategic. The Korean technology conglomerate has made artificial intelligence the centerpiece of its near-term plans, developing its "Kanana" AI model family and deepening a partnership with OpenAI. Divesting non-core holdings in a bearish crypto market frees capital for that shift.
Samsung's rationale runs in the opposite direction. South Korea's largest company introduced a digital asset wallet in 2019 and, with Thursday's purchase, its affiliates now hold direct equity in the country's dominant exchange. Each buyer cited specific ambitions: Samsung Securities will pursue token securities and virtual asset services with Dunamu; Samsung SDS will combine its IT and AI capabilities with Dunamu's blockchain infrastructure; Samsung Card intends to build a digital asset payment ecosystem, including potential crypto-based payments on its Monimo platform if a won-based stablecoin regime materializes.
Market reaction on Thursday was mixed. Samsung Securities fell 2.7%, Samsung SDS dropped 5%, and Kakao slipped roughly 1%. Samsung Card bucked the trend, gaining 0.21%.
The broader pattern is legible. South Korean institutional capital — a financial group, a conglomerate's investment bank, an insurer, and now three arms of the Samsung group — is rotating into exchange equity while retail prices soften. The strategic logic is infrastructure ownership, not a directional bet on token prices: control of the rails that a won-based stablecoin market or tokenized securities regime would run on.
Sources: DART regulatory filing, May 28 2026 | Korea Herald | CoinDesk | KED Global (Hanwha deal)