Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom (pictured left) and Stephen Balaban, CEO and co-founder of Lambda, pose for a commemorative photo after discussing specific cooperation plans at Lambda’s San Jose headquarters in January 2024.

SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM, “SKT”) today announced that it entered into a partnership agreement with Lambda, the GPU cloud company founded by AI engineers, for collaboration in the AI cloud business.

The two companies agreed to establish a large-scale NVIDIA GPU cluster to support AI cloud business opportunities in South Korea. SKT and Lambda will deploy NVIDIA GPU clusters in SK Broadband’s Gasan data center in Korea by the end of this year. This cluster will be based on Lambda’s cloud computing platform, accelerated by NVIDIA.

Establishing a strategic partnership with Lambda underscores SKT’s commitment to providing unprecedented access to scalable AI infrastructure in South Korea. SKT will launch AI cloud services, including GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS), to enable enterprises to access GPU cloud services on an as-needed basis to develop or utilize AI services.

The collaboration between the two companies is expected to boost the expansion of SKT’s AI cloud services into the global market.

“A strategic partnership with Lambda will strengthen our competitiveness in AI cloud services and develop greater business opportunities in Korea,” said Kim Kyeong-deog, Vice President and Head of Enterprise Business Division at SKT.

“SKT shares in our vision to make GPU compute as ubiquitous as electricity,” said Lambda CEO and co-founder Stephen Balaban. “Given the rapid pace of innovation in AI happening in South Korea, we’re excited to partner with SKT and support their effort to grow and develop their AI cloud expertise in the region.”

Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom (fourth from the left in the back row) and Stephen Balaban, CEO and co-founder of Lambda (fifth from the left in the back row), along with key representatives from both companies, are posing for a commemorative photo after discussing cooperation plans at Lambda’s San Jose headquarters in January 2024.