Power drives SK Telecom to AI pyramid strategy
Korean telecoms firm SK Telecom (SKT) is aiming to pivot to being a full stack AI provider with an emphasis on power management.
The SKT ‘AI Pyramid Strategy’ to accelerate innovation is centred around three key areas: AI Infrastructure, AI Transformation (AIX) and AI Services. By 2028, the company will triple the proportion of its AI-related investments and become a global AI company with revenue of KRW 25 trillion (US$18.5bn)
The AI Infrastructure plan consists of data centre, AI semiconductor, and multiple large language models (LLM) will serve as a technology platform. This will introduce energy-saving technologies including immersion cooling system and hydrogen fuel cells, and expand into the AI hosting business that generates higher margins by bundling these energy-saving solutions with Sapeon’s neural processing unit (NPU) and SK Hynix’s high bandwidth memory (HBM).
This will see SKT building energy efficient data centres globally, almost doubling its data centre capacity by 2030.
Sapeon, an AI semiconductor company established by SKT, will launch its X330 next-generation inference AI chip at the end of this year. The X330 has approximately twice the computational performance and 1.3 times the power efficiency compared to the latest inference chips on the market.
- Sapeon raises $46m for in-memory AI chips
- First In Memory Computing chip for GDDR6
- Samsung and SK Telecom show next generation cloud
The power consumption of LLMs such as GEPT4.0 and Lama2 is also a key factor. SKT has invested $100m in US AI developer Anthropic to fine tune its own telco LLM called A.X LLM.
It has a two-track approach to secure diverse LLMs as well as an overall platform that encompasses the LLMs. It is advancing its own LLM based on high-quality telecoms data accumulated over decades while collaborating with a diverse range of partners, including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Konan Technology, to develop tailored LLM and related technologies specifically for the telcoms industry.
In addition, the company will continue to secure more sophisticated LLM technologies based on its supercomputer Titan, which ranked no. 47 on the Top 500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers; high understanding of the Korean language trained with the world’s largest Korean language data; intelligence platform where multi LLMs and AI technologies customized for diverse telco use cases can be used; and multimodal LLM technologies that support communication via not only text but also voice and video.
In the area of AI Service, SKT announces the official launch of ‘A.’ and plans to build a globally competitive personal AI assistant service powered by its telco and AI assets.
SKT will also evolve SK Broadband’s Btv service into AI TV to deliver a new level of convenience and value. For instance, ‘AI Curation’ will identify the user and show personalized TV; and ‘AI Home’ will allow users to enjoy various media services by conversing with an AI agent.
In addition, by combining multi LLM with existing AI solutions like Vision AI, Language AI and Big Data AI, the company to expand its data platform business to manufacturers.
It also plans to grow its new business areas such as urban air mobility (UAM), or air taxi management. It is a major investor in Joby Aviation which is building a production plant in the US.
“Destructive innovation triggered by generative AI is already creating new value in all areas of industry, society, and life. With our AI Pyramid Strategy, we will make accelerated moves to strengthen our own capabilities and cooperate with diverse partners, and expand our AI-related resource investments. Through these efforts, we aim to become a global AI company that benefits customers, increases industry productivity, and solves social problems with innovative technologies and services,” said Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT.
Earlier this year SKT teamed with SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, e& and Singtel to set up the Global Telco AI Alliance to create telecoms-focussed AI.
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