SK Telecom (SKT) is strengthening its global AI leadership by joining hands with 'Together AI (together.ai),' an AI specialized startup headquartered in California, USA, to advance AI technology.

SKT announced on the 24th that it will make a strategic investment in Together AI and expand the global AI ecosystem.

This collaboration aims to build an AI platform and advance technology, and focuses on strengthening market competitiveness through innovative AI algorithms and efficiency.

Together AI is an AI cloud and open source company founded in 2022, and has recently attracted attention by attracting $350 million in Series B investment.

It is growing by securing 500,000 global customers through the development of innovative algorithms such as 'FlashAttention', AI inference and fine-tuning technology, and low-cost GPU cluster construction.

Key clients include Zoom, The Washington Post, and Salesforce.

SKT will utilize Together AI's GPU efficiency technology 'Together Kernel Collection' and model compression technology 'QTIP' to reduce the size of AI models and reduce costs.

Through this collaboration, SKT will operate its own AI model and data center (AI DC).We want to maximize efficiency.

In particular, we are exploring collaboration in various ways to develop the personal AI agent 'Aster (A*)' and LLM, and to improve GPU efficiency.

Together AI's technological prowess is expected to be applied throughout SKT's AI ecosystem.

This is expected to create synergy in AI model learning, platform construction, and data center operation, thereby strengthening the company's position in the global AI industry.

SKT has been expanding strategic investments centered on LLM and AI platform development over the past two years.

Representative examples include Anthropic, Perplexity, and Twelve Labs. In particular, Anthropic and Perplexity are evaluated as successful collaboration cases as their corporate value has increased more than threefold since SKT’s investment.

Antropic's generative AI 'Claude' is being utilized in SKT's customer center and B2B market, and Perplexity is strengthening its cooperation with SKT in the field of personal AI agents. In addition, Twelve Labs is being recognized by global companies such as NVIDIA based on its video AI technology.

SKT plans to secure market leadership through continuous global AI cooperation based on the 'AI Pyramid 2.0' strategy announced at MWC25. To this end, we plan to continue active investment and collaboration in elements that constitute the foundation of the AI industry, such as AI data centers, AI models, and platforms.

“AI is an important tool that drives innovation across all industries,” said TogetherAI CEO Vipul Ved Prakash. “Through our collaboration with SKT, we will develop new AI services and maximize synergy between our two companies.”

SKT’s Lee Jae-shin, head of the AI Growth Strategy Division, also said, “This collaboration will be an opportunity to take our AI platform technology to the next level,” and “Through continued investment and collaboration, we will create SKT’s own unique AI usage methods.”