- SKT consortium conducts Korean authorities’s ‘Sovereign AI Basis Mannequin’ challenge with A.X K1, positioning Korea for World High 3 AI Powers
- A.X K1: Korea’s first ‘Instructor Mannequin’ for smaller and specialised functions
- SK Telecom realizes AI as public good, advancing Korean authorities’s ‘AI for Everybody’ with 20 million-user service basis
- SKT consortium’s full-stack AI ecosystem positioned to function nationwide AI infrastructure
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) right now unveiled ‘A.X K1,’ Korea’s first hyperscale synthetic intelligence (AI) mannequin with 519 billion (519B) parameters.
A.X K1 (519B-A33B) is poised to function the core basis for Korea’s ambition to develop into a top-three world participant within the AI race, following the U.S. and China. The mannequin marks the start of a full-stack AI ecosystem, encompassing all areas from semiconductors to providers.
500B–Scale to Energy Korea’s AI Ecosystem as a ‘Instructor Mannequin’
A.X K1, Korea’s first hyperscale AI mannequin, represents a big milestone in enhancing the worldwide competitiveness of Korean AI inside a panorama at the moment dominated by the U.S. and China.
In contrast to knowledge-consuming AI fashions, A.X K1 features as a ‘Instructor Mannequin’ — a supplier of information — enabling information switch to smaller fashions, notably these beneath the 70B-scale. It additionally serves as foundational digital social overhead capital (SOC) for the AI ecosystem. The SKT consortium will broaden analysis to allow A.X K1 to switch information to smaller and specialised fashions, driving innovation for Korea.
At scales above 500 billion parameters, AI fashions exhibit extra steady efficiency in advanced mathematical reasoning and multilingual understanding, in response to world instances. These enhanced capabilities allow superior duties similar to high-complexity coding and agent-based execution.
Promotes AI as Public Good, Advancing ‘AI for Everybody’ By means of Companies Already in Energetic Nationwide Use
The SKT consortium plans to strengthen nationwide AI accessibility by providing A.X K1 by way of A. (A-DoT), which has over 10 million subscribers. The consortium goals to construct an ‘AI for Everybody’ framework, enabling the general public to simply entry AI through telephone calls, textual content messages, the net and functions.
Liner, a member of the SKT consortium, operates knowledgeable information search providers for greater than 11 million world subscribers. Expectations are excessive that it’s going to present extremely correct and dependable search providers in a number of languages with A.X K1.
A.X K1 can also be anticipated to spice up industrial competitiveness by way of AIX — together with options similar to A. Biz for manufacturing, real-time character dialogue and autonomous habits in Krafton’s video games, and humanoid AI robots.
Moreover, A.X K1 will function a testbed to validate the competitiveness of Korea’s semiconductor business. An AI mannequin able to working at a non-standard scale of workload (500B or extra) is indispensable for virtually verifying reminiscence bandwidth and inter-GPU communication pace, that are key efficiency bottlenecks in high-performance AI semiconductors.
Constructing a Full-Stack AI to Advance Korea’s World High-Three AI Technique
The SKT consortium’s enterprise technique, together with SK Telecom’s 500B-scale AI mannequin, aligns with Korea’s nationwide aim of changing into one of many world’s prime three AI nations.
On this world race, success relies upon not solely within the efficiency of particular person fashions but in addition on a nation’s capacity to scale and function AI at a nationwide stage.
The SK Telecom-led SKT consortium consists of eight organizations: SK Telecom, Krafton, 42dot, Rebellions, Liner, SelectStar, Seoul Nationwide College, and KAIST. Collectively, they’ve constructed a full-stack sovereign AI platform based mostly totally on proprietary applied sciences throughout the complete worth chain, together with AI semiconductors, AI knowledge facilities (AIDCs), AI fashions and AI providers.
Constructing on LLM improvement efforts since 2018, every consortium member contributed specialised experience: Liner enhanced accuracy by way of expert-level data retrieval expertise; SelectStar ensured reliability by way of large-scale knowledge building and validation; Krafton supplied scalability from world multimodal R&D expertise; 42dot strengthened versatility by way of its on-device AI expertise; and Rebellions improved effectivity with domestically developed NPU expertise.
Already, greater than 20 establishments, together with main associates similar to SK hynix, SK Innovation, SK Broadband, the Chey Institute for Superior Research and the Korea Basis for Superior Research, have submitted letters of intent to take part. These establishments have agreed to make the most of and validate A.X K1 collectively in real-world subject settings.
The consortium plans to launch A.X K1 as open-source to corporations throughout Korea’s AI ecosystem. By means of main developer communities and SK Telecom platforms, the consortium will present open-source entry and APIs to foster an atmosphere for seamless AI agent improvement.
Moreover, the consortium will set up an built-in help framework for AI mannequin improvement and disclose parts of the coaching knowledge used for mannequin improvement by way of private and non-private platforms, boosting Korea’s general AI competitiveness.
“This marks a brand new inflection level in Korea’s journey towards changing into one of many world’s prime three AI nations amid intensifying world competitors,” mentioned Kim Tae-yoon, Head of Basis Mannequin Workplace at SK Telecom. “As Korea’s main AI firm, we are going to proceed driving our efforts to ship AI for Everybody.”
About SK Telecom
SK Telecom has been main the expansion of the cell business since 1984. Now, it’s taking buyer expertise to new heights by extending past connectivity. By inserting AI on the core of its enterprise, SK Telecom is quickly remodeling into an AI firm with a powerful world presence. It’s specializing in driving improvements in areas of AI Infrastructure, AI Transformation (AIX) and AI Service to ship larger worth for business, society, and life.
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SOURCE SK Telecom
