SK Telecom (SKT) has announced a $100 million investment in Anthropic to develop a large language model (LLM) tailored for telecommunications companies.
Anthropic, a San Francisco–based AI research and safety company, has previously received investment from SKT’s venture capital arm, SK Telecom Venture Capital. This new investment deepens the partnership between SKT and Anthropic with the goal of creating an industry-specific LLM that addresses the particular needs of telcos.
The collaboration aims to produce a multilingual model capable of supporting languages such as Korean, English, German, Japanese, Arabic, and Spanish. By combining SKT’s telecom expertise with Anthropic’s advanced AI research, the partners intend to deliver a model optimised for real-world telco applications.
Dario Amodei, Co-Founder and CEO of Anthropic, said:
“SKT has ambitious plans to use AI to transform the telco industry. We’re excited to combine our AI expertise with SKT’s industry knowledge to build an LLM customised for telcos. Industry-specific LLMs have strong potential to enable safer and more reliable AI deployments.”
Anthropic’s recent work, including its Claude series of models, provides the technical foundation for this effort. The plan is to customise and refine the model to serve telco-specific use cases such as customer service automation, targeted marketing, sales support, and interactive consumer applications. Jared Kaplan, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Anthropic, will oversee the industry customisation efforts to ensure the model meets telco requirements.
This initiative also ties into the Telco AI Platform, a project driven by the Global Telco AI Alliance — a coalition that includes SKT, Deutsche Telekom, e&, and Singtel. The Telco AI Platform seeks to reduce the burden on individual operators by removing the need for each telco to build and train its own LLM, a process that typically demands extensive time and resources.
By sharing a common platform and industry-focused models, alliance members will be able to more rapidly develop and deploy AI-driven services and applications adapted to their local markets and customer bases. This approach aims to accelerate innovation across the telecom sector while promoting safer, more reliable AI adoption.
Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SKT, commented:
“With our strategic investment in Anthropic, a global-leading AI technology company, we will work closely with Anthropic to drive AI innovation. By combining our Korean language–based LLM work with Anthropic’s strong AI capabilities, we expect to create synergy and achieve leadership in the AI ecosystem together with our global telco partners.”
The SKT-Anthropic collaboration marks a notable step toward the convergence of AI and telecommunications. It promises to improve operational efficiency, stimulate new service models, and deliver more customer-centric solutions across the global telco landscape.
Earlier in June, SKT hosted a meeting at its Silicon Valley headquarters with CEOs from four other AI partners — CMES, MakinaRocks, Scatter Lab, and FriendliAI — to discuss collaboration and strengthen SKT’s position as a telco leader in adopting artificial intelligence.
(Image Credit: kiquebg from Pixabay)
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