Korea’s major telecommunications company, SK Telecom is rapidly morphing into an AI company as it witnessed significant growth in its second-quarter earnings, mainly driven by artificial intelligence, data center, and cloud business.
SK Telecom recorded over 4.3 trillion won (US$ 3.26 billion) in sales and 463.4 billion won (US$ 350.8 million) in operating profit during Q2. They climbed 0.4% and 0.8% in Q2 compared to the same period last year.
In particular, sales from the data center business increased by more than 30% compared to the same period last year. The company attributed the jump in improved sales to the opening of the second center in the southern Seoul Metropolitan Area of Bundang and the increase in the efficiency of data centers. SK Telecom announced it’s preparing to open a new data center.
Sales of the company’s cloud business climbed by more than 60% compared to the same period last year due to increased orders in SK Telecom’s gaming and finance sectors. The telecom operator said it expects additional growth with the commercial release of its AI service and expansion into the hybrid cloud market.
Last month, SK Telecom signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Singtel, E& and Deutsche Telekom to jointly develop a global platform that supports the establishment of a core Large Language Model. The alliance is expected to help each company focus on increasing value through the localization of AI services and save capital when independently developing such a platform.
In June, SK Telecom added the ‘ChatT’ function to its AI service “A.” –pronounced as “A dot”- which utilizes the ChatGPT model of the Microsoft Azure Open AI service. The function is intended to enrich users with information as if they’re having a conversation with experts from specialized fields.
