SK Telecom has announced its AI Native transformation strategy aimed at redefining its telecom business, accelerating Korea’s AI goals, and building one of Asia’s largest AI infrastructure ecosystems. The announcement was made by CEO Jung Jai-hun during a press conference in Barcelona, Spain, outlining large-scale investments in AI infrastructure, autonomous networks, sovereign AI models, and enterprise AI solutions.
The strategy marks a major shift in SKT’s corporate DNA from a traditional telecommunications model to a fully AI-driven enterprise, positioning the company at the forefront of Korea’s goal to become one of the world’s top three AI leaders.
AI-Powered Telco: Reinventing Telecom with AI at the Core
At the heart of SKT’s AI Native vision is the transformation into an AI-powered telco. The company will overhaul its integrated IT systems, including sales IT, line management, and billing platforms, redesigning them to be fully optimized for AI.
By embedding AI across telecom operations, SKT plans to deliver hyper-personalized pricing plans, roaming packages, and membership benefits tailored to individual customer behavior and preferences. The company aims to enhance customer-perceived value through intelligent automation and predictive service design.
To strengthen digital trust, SKT will implement a Zero Trust security framework across all systems. This includes rigorous authentication, advanced access control, network segmentation, and AI-based integrated security monitoring to safeguard customer data and telecom infrastructure.
SKT is accelerating its autonomous network operations strategy. Using AI-driven automation across wireless quality management, traffic optimization, and equipment operations, the company aims to transition from human-centered management to AI-driven network intelligence. With AI-RAN technology, SKT plans to deliver ultra-low latency, seamless, and high-performance connectivity.
Redesigning Customer Experience with Integrated AI Agents
As part of its AI transformation, SKT will redesign telecom services to make them simpler, more intuitive, and customer-centric. AI will automatically analyze usage patterns and recommend personalized packages in real time.
The company is developing an integrated AI agent that connects customer experiences across digital touchpoints such as T world and T Direct Shop. By unifying fragmented experiences, the AI agent will provide consistent personalization across online platforms, customer service channels, and retail stores.
SKT is enhancing its AI Contact Center capabilities, enabling customer service representatives to leverage AI tools for faster, more accurate responses. Offline stores will also adopt AI-driven insights to shift from transactional sales to deeper, experience-focused engagement, offering personalized recommendations even after store visits.
The company plans to introduce AI Personas that analyze digital behavior data across customer segments. Through conversational Q&A interfaces, these personas will enable more natural and meaningful two-way communication.
SKT is also upgrading its A. phone, also known as A-DoT phone, into a fully functional AI agent capable of organizing call notes, managing schedules, connecting users to relevant services, and executing related actions autonomously.
Building 1GW AI Data Centers to Create Asia’s Largest AIDC Hub
A major pillar of SKT’s AI Native strategy is the construction of 1GW-class hyperscale AI data centers across Korea. The company aims to attract global investment and establish the country as Asia’s largest AI Data Center hub.
In addition to its GPU cluster Haein, SKT plans to expand hyperscale AI data center capacity beyond 1GW through global partnerships. The company is also collaborating with OpenAI to build an AI data center in Korea’s southwestern region, forming part of a nationwide AI infrastructure network.
Together with SK hynix, SK Ecoplant, and SK Innovation, SKT will secure capabilities across the full AI data center value chain, including construction, cooling, servers, energy solutions, and operations. This integrated approach aims to deliver industry-leading cost efficiency and performance.
SKT also plans to globalize its Petasus AI Cloud, a high-performance virtualization solution currently deployed in its Haein GPU cluster for GPU-as-a-Service offerings.
Advancing Sovereign AI with 1 Trillion Parameter Foundation Model
SKT will upgrade its sovereign AI foundation model from 519 billion parameters to over 1 trillion parameters, strengthening Korea’s AI sovereignty and technological independence.
The next-generation model will incorporate multimodal capabilities, enabling it to process image, voice, and video data in addition to text. The multimodal expansion is expected to begin in the second half of the year, opening new possibilities for enterprise automation, smart manufacturing, and AI-driven services.
In collaboration with SK hynix, SKT is also developing a manufacturing-specialized AI solution package aimed at enhancing competitiveness in semiconductor and energy industries. The solution analyzes real-time process data to reduce defect rates and maximize equipment efficiency. It will be offered in three formats – infrastructure, model, and solution – to support flexible enterprise adoption.
Company-Wide AI Transformation and Cultural Shift
CEO Jung emphasized that AI transformation must extend beyond technology into corporate culture. SKT has introduced an AX Dashboard that provides visibility into AI adoption at both departmental and individual levels, accelerating enterprise-wide AI utilization.
The company has established an AI Board to support AI Transformation initiatives and created an AI playground where employees can build and deploy AI agents without coding expertise. Currently, more than 2,000 AI agents are actively used across marketing, legal, PR, and other departments.