In a strategic move to advance its AI capabilities, SK Telecom (SKT) has announced a significant investment of $100 million in Anthropic, a cutting-edge AI safety and research company based in San Francisco.
Building upon the previous investment by SK Telecom Venture Capital (SKTVC), the venture capital arm of SKT, this partnership aims to develop a large language model (LLM) tailored specifically for telecommunications companies.

The collaboration between SKT and Anthropic will give rise to a multilingual LLM that supports various languages, including Korean, English, German, Japanese, Arabic, and Spanish. Leveraging SKT’s extensive experience in the telecommunications sector and Anthropic’s AI technology, particularly their renowned AI model “Claude,” the industry-focused model will be meticulously customized to meet the unique requirements of telcos.

Anthropic’s role in the partnership will involve refining the Claude model to address telco-specific use cases, such as industry-specific customer service, marketing, sales, and interactive consumer applications. By fine-tuning the model to cater to the telco sector, the performance gains are expected to surpass those achieved using more generalized models. Overseeing the customization process and product roadmap will be Jared Kaplan, a Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Anthropic.

Furthermore, SKT and Anthropic are joining forces to integrate the multilingual LLM into the Telco AI Platform, a project currently under development by the Global Telco AI Alliance. This collaboration envisions a future where telcos can skip the resource-intensive process of building their own LLMs, saving considerable time and cost. Members of the Global Telco AI Alliance, including industry giants like Deutsche Telekom, e&, and Singtel, will have the opportunity to swiftly develop and offer AI services and applications tailored to their specific markets and customer bases.

The partnership with Anthropic reinforces SKT’s commitment to revolutionizing the telco industry through AI innovation. This strategic investment, coupled with the launch of the Global Telco AI Alliance, promises a harmonious synergy among SKT, Anthropic, and the alliance’s partners. According to Dario Amodei, Co-Founder and CEO of Anthropic, industry-specific LLMs hold the potential to pave the way for safer and more reliable AI deployments.

Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT, expressed his enthusiasm for the collaboration, highlighting the company’s determination to harness AI to transform the telecommunications sector. He emphasized that by merging SKT’s Korean language-based LLM with Anthropic’s formidable AI capabilities, they aspire to achieve leadership within the AI ecosystem alongside their global telco partners. The partnership is poised to drive AI innovation forward and establish new benchmarks in the telecommunications industry.