SKT and a global telecommunications company are joining forces to jointly develop LLM and build an AI platform.

SK Telecom announced on the 13th that it has invested $100 million (approximately 130 billion won) in Antropic, a U.S. generative AI company, and signed a partnership to strengthen cooperation in the AI business.

SKT launched the 'Global Telco AI Alliance' last month and decided on this large-scale investment following its Series C investment in Antropic last May.

Antropic, headquartered in San Francisco, USA, is a generative AI company co-founded in 2021 by researchers from OpenAI. SKT stated that Antropic's 'Claude' is considered one of the most outstanding AI chatbots currently in existence, alongside OpenAI's ChatGPT. Antropic recently attracted large-scale investments from US big tech firms such as Google and Salesforce.
SKT and Antropic are pursuing business cooperation for the joint development of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the construction of AI platforms.

The two companies jointly develop LLMs in Korean, English, German, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, and others. Antropic supplies SKT with tools that fine-tune and optimize massive language models according to specific purposes.

The LLM jointly developed by the two companies, along with Antropic's Claude model, is scheduled to be provided to domestic companies and others through SKT.

In addition, the two companies will develop a multilingual LLM-based AI platform for the development of AI services for the 'Global Telco AI Alliance' formed around SKT. Each company, including Deutsche Telekom (German), e& (Arabic), and Singtel (English), will build a platform that reflects their respective requirements and local characteristics.

Regarding this collaboration, Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Antropic, stated, “SKT, with its capabilities in developing Korean LLMs and extensive experience in the telecommunications industry, is the optimal partner to jointly build an LLM specialized for the telecommunications business,” adding, “I am impressed by SKT’s bold vision and strategy to actively leverage AI to innovate the telecommunications industry.”

SKT CEO Yoo Young-sang said, “We will fully launch our cooperation through this strategic investment in Antropic, a world-class AI tech company,” adding, “We plan to lead the AI ecosystem together with global telecommunications companies by combining SKT’s Korean AI technology with Antropic’s global AI capabilities.”