"'A.X K1' is a very large model with 500 billion parameters, and by deeply learning Korea's language, culture, and context, it showed performance that surpassed the global model GPT-4o in Korea-specialized tasks such as emotional conversations, knowledge conversations, and currency summaries."
Jeong Seok-geun, head of SK Telecom's AI CIC, stated accordingly on the 30th at the "independent AI foundation model project first briefing" held at the COEX Auditorium in Samseong-dong, Seoul. Jeong, an executive vice president, said, "We plan to develop very large models with more than 1 trillion and up to 2 trillion parameters in the future," adding, "If this happens, integrated reasoning capabilities will be maximized, and we will have the scale to compete with global AI models."
SK Telecom said it concentrated its Korean language model development experience, which continued from KoBERT (2018) and KoGPT-2, into "A.X K1." Jeong also presented an "AI highway" to back the large model. Jeong said, "SK Telecom will support training and inference through the supercomputer 'Titan,' built since 2021, and the single 'GPU as a service (GPUaaS)-based' 'Haein Cluster,' and will expand the hub-type AI data center (AI DC) infrastructure centered on the Ulsan and Southwest region data centers to play the role of digital social overhead capital (SOC) that helps AI utilization across industries."
Development will proceed in the form of an industry-academia-research consortium. Jeong said, "We will work with Krafton, Rebellions, and 42dot, and in addition to KAIST and Seoul National University, overseas researchers from NYU and the University of Wisconsin–Madison will also participate," adding, "We will combine hardware capabilities, including Rebellions' domestically produced Neural Processing Unit (NPU), with joint research with domestic and overseas research groups to accelerate model advancement and optimization."
The services SK Telecom is developing are divided into "everyday AI" and "industrial AI." The AI agent "adot (A.)," which has secured 10 million users, is evolving beyond currency summaries, meeting minutes, and schedule management into a personal assistant that reflects the user's situation and preferences. It is also developing into an agent that handles complex requests such as web browsing and travel. In the industrial domain, SK Telecom put forward a "manufacturing AI agent" that understands manufacturing site data such as semiconductors, batteries, and energy to support production planning, quality control, and process decision-making.
Jeong said, "Based on our experience verifying manufacturing AI in Korea, we will expand into the global market beyond Asia," adding, "We will build an ecosystem that ties infrastructure-model-agent-industry application into one around 'A.X K1,' and starting from our competitiveness in Korean, we will expand use cases in overseas markets." Jeong added, "Based on our experience implementing AI at a national team level across areas from AI Semiconductor to services, we will strengthen national industry and accelerate an AI ecosystem that makes life more convenient for everyone."