XMax, Formerly a Furniture Distributor, Commits About $122.5M to Blackwell GPU Capacity in Korea

XMax (XMAX), the Nasdaq-listed company formerly known as Nova LifeStyle, has signed a five-year agreement for dedicated AI computing capacity in South Korea and says its related AI businesses should generate more than $100 million in cumulative revenue over the period. Service began Oct. 29 with 480 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra B300 GPUs, and the cluster is planned to grow to 512. The agreement is a commitment by XMax to pay for capacity: scheduled charges total about $122.5 million, according to the company's SEC filing, and the long-term commitment is still subject to board approval and a security deadline of Nov. 17.

Key terms

Conditions that could unwind the deal

The long-term commitment depends on XMax's board approving the required security and on the letter of credit and related documents being delivered by Nov. 17. If the conditions are not met, the long-term commitment does not start, the initial arrangement ends, and the setup fee is XMax's sole liability. The filing also lets kt cloud suspend service for overdue payments and terminate if the initial payment is not received in full. The agreement is governed by Korean law.

Cost versus projected revenue

The $100 million figure is the company's projection of revenue from the businesses the capacity will support, not a contract value or a payment XMax will receive. Set against the cost, the numbers are tight. By our calculation, $100 million of revenue would cover about 82% of the $122.5 million in scheduled charges before any other expense, and the charges average about $2 million a month. At the full 512 GPUs, the charges work out to roughly $5.50 per GPU-hour, by our calculation. XMax would need to resell the capacity at well above that rate, or at high utilization, to earn a margin; the company has not disclosed customers or pricing for the planned services.

What XMax plans to build

XMax distributes contemporary furniture and has been adding AI software and platform services through subsidiaries XMax AI Inc. and Elonx AI Holdings. Two services are planned on the Korean capacity:

• NeoCloud: AI-optimized cloud infrastructure for enterprise workloads, focused on inference.
• AI Token Factory: a self-operated, distributed inference platform with usage-based API billing, model-as-a-service and enterprise applications such as AI agents and retrieval-augmented generation.

Delivery is planned through APIs, a command-line tool and managed workspaces, with operations in the United States, Japan, Korea and Singapore. CEO Andy Lu said the immediate focus is completing technical validation of the first AI Token Factory, which means the revenue side of the plan has yet to launch.

What to watch

• Nov. 6. The first payment of about $2.1 million is due.
• Nov. 17. Board approval and delivery of the letter of credit and guarantee decide whether the five-year commitment starts.
• Funding. How XMax finances the commitment and the roughly $8.2 million security requirement.
• Customers. Named customers, pricing and launch timing for NeoCloud and AI Token Factory.
• Currency. Charges are set in Korean won, so exchange-rate moves change the dollar cost; the company lists this among its risks.
• Sector backdrop. Smaller AI infrastructure names have traded with the group. See our coverage of IREN's Spanish campus and the Anthropic S-1 amendment.

Sources: XMax Inc. Form 8-K and press release exhibit filed with the SEC on Nov. 2. The revenue projection and service plans are forward-looking statements; results could differ materially. Items labeled by our calculation are our own arithmetic. This article is informational only and is not investment advice.