SK Telecom (SKT), South Korea's largest telco, has confirmed an investment of $100 million in the United States artificial intelligence firm Anthropic to strengthen its telecommunications-driven AI business by developing a multilingual large language model (LLM) for global telcos.
“By combining our Korean language-based LLM with Anthropic’s strong AI capabilities, we expect to create synergy and gain leadership in the AI ecosystem together with our global telco partners,” said SKT CEO Ryu Young-sang.
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former Open AI executives, is a startup company competing with OpenAI in establishing AI foundation models. It is currently among the most well-funded AI firms, having already raised $450 million from different investors. SKT also invested an initial undisclosed amount in Anthropic back in May.
The LLM will be capable of supporting languages including Korean, German, English, Japanese, Spanish and Arabic. The AI customization and platform direction will be overseen by Anthropic co-founder and Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan.
In July, major global telcos such as SKT, e&, Deutsche Telecom and Singtel partnered to form a Global Telco AI Alliance, signing a multilateral Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on the use of AI. The four telco operators pledged to combine their respective technologies to build a telco-focused AI platform that will provide customized AI services and apps to users in each market.
