SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM, hereinafter referred to as “SKT”) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Kakao Corp. to cooperate in areas of Artificial intelligence (AI), Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and share their key technology and business assets with the society.

SKT and Kakao will jointly develop sophisticated AI technologies in areas including AI infrastructure, data and language models to promote growth of the AI industry and ecosystem in Korea. The two companies plan to share AI training data in the form of text, voice and pictures and actively utilize them for development of technologies. They will begin their investment and development this year and will promote opening up of these technologies to academia and startups.

They also plan to create a joint ESG fund to support innovative startups and SMEs in their ESG activities for sustainable development. The companies are currently considering operating the fund through Kakao Ventures, the venture capital arm of Kakao.

Moreover, SKT and Kakao will also share patents with each other and open them up to ventures and SMEs for the good of the society. The two companies will make best efforts to avoid IPR-related disputes so as to strengthen IPR exchanges, and will jointly create an IPR pool for future business areas including AI, platform and media.

This will enable ventures and SMEs to utilize key technological and business assets of SKT and Kakao free of charge and significantly reduce both time and costs for securing patents.

SKT and Kakao have been working together closely through ‘Synergy Council’ since 2019, when they entered into a strategic partnership and a share swap deal worth KRW 300 billion.

“We expect the key ICT assets of SKT and Kakao to help accelerate the development of our society,” said Ryu Young-sang, President of MNO at SKT. “We will make our best efforts to secure innovative AI technologies and fully utilize them to resolve the challenges facing the modern society.”

“Through our strengthened partnership with SKT, we will be sharing key assets in AI, ESG and IPR not only with each other but also with the society to realize meaningful changes.” said Yeo Min-soo, co-CEO of Kakao. “Based on our ICT, we will contribute to the advancement of the industry, while making efforts to address environmental and social problems.”