{"id":2533,"date":"2025-12-28T09:05:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T00:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/?p=2533"},"modified":"2025-12-28T09:05:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T00:05:52","slug":"sk-telecom-unveils-a-x-k1-koreas-first-500b-scale-hyperscale-ai-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/2533","title":{"rendered":"SK Telecom Unveils A.X K1, Korea\u2019s First 500B-Scale Hyperscale AI Model"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2022 SKT consortium conducts Korean government\u2019s \u2018Sovereign AI Foundation Model\u2019 project with A.X K1, positioning Korea for Global Top 3 AI Powers <\/strong>
\n\u2022 A.X K1: Korea\u2019s first \u2018Teacher Model\u2019 for smaller and specialized applications <\/strong>
\n\u2022 SK Telecom realizes AI as public good, advancing Korean government\u2019s \u2018AI for Everyone\u2019 with 20 million-user service foundation <\/strong>
\n\u2022 SKT consortium\u2019s full-stack AI ecosystem positioned to serve as national AI infrastructure<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) today unveiled \u2018A.X K1,\u2019 Korea\u2019s first hyperscale artificial intelligence (AI) model with 519 billion (519B) parameters.<\/p>\n

A.X K1 (519B-A33B) is poised to serve as the core foundation for Korea\u2019s ambition to become a top-three global player in the AI race, following the U.S. and China. The model marks the beginning of a full-stack AI ecosystem, encompassing all areas from semiconductors to services.<\/p>\n

500B-Scale to Power Korea\u2019s AI Ecosystem as a \u2018Teacher Model\u2019<\/h2>\n

A.X K1, Korea\u2019s first hyperscale AI model, represents a significant milestone in enhancing the global competitiveness of Korean AI within a landscape currently dominated by the U.S. and China.<\/p>\n

Unlike knowledge-consuming AI models, A.X K1 functions as a \u2018Teacher Model\u2019 \u2014 a provider of knowledge \u2014 enabling knowledge transfer to smaller models, particularly those below the 70B-scale. It also serves as foundational digital social overhead capital (SOC) for the AI ecosystem. The SKT consortium will expand research to enable A.X K1 to transfer knowledge to smaller and specialized models, driving innovation for Korea.<\/p>\n

At scales above 500 billion parameters, AI models demonstrate more stable performance in complex mathematical reasoning and multilingual understanding, according to global cases. These enhanced capabilities enable advanced tasks such as high-complexity coding and agent-based execution.<\/p>\n

Promotes AI as Public Good, Advancing \u2018AI for Everyone\u2019 Through Services Already in Active Nationwide Use<\/h2>\n

The SKT consortium plans to strengthen nationwide AI accessibility by offering A.X K1 through A. (A-DoT), which has over 10 million subscribers. The consortium aims to build an \u2018AI for Everyone\u2019 framework, enabling the public to easily access AI via phone calls, text messages, the web and applications.<\/p>\n

Liner, a member of the SKT consortium, operates expert knowledge search services for more than 11 million global subscribers. Expectations are high that it will provide highly accurate and reliable search services in multiple languages with A.X K1.<\/p>\n

A.X K1 is also expected to boost industrial competitiveness through AIX \u2014 including solutions such as A. Biz for manufacturing, real-time character dialogue and autonomous behavior in Krafton\u2019s games, and humanoid AI robots.
\nAdditionally, A.X K1 will serve as a testbed to validate the competitiveness of Korea\u2019s semiconductor industry. An AI model capable of operating at a non-standard scale of workload (500B or more) is indispensable for practically verifying memory bandwidth and inter-GPU communication speed, which are key performance bottlenecks in high-performance AI semiconductors.<\/p>\n

Building a Full-Stack AI to Advance Korea\u2019s Global Top-Three AI Strategy<\/h2>\n

The SKT consortium\u2019s business strategy, including SK Telecom\u2019s 500B-scale AI model, aligns with Korea\u2019s national goal of becoming one of the world\u2019s top three AI nations.<\/p>\n

In this global race, success depends not only in the performance of individual models but also on a nation\u2019s ability to scale and operate AI at a national level.<\/p>\n

The SK Telecom-led SKT consortium includes eight organizations: SK Telecom, Krafton, 42dot, Rebellions, Liner, SelectStar, Seoul National University, and KAIST. Together, they have built a full-stack sovereign AI platform based entirely on proprietary technologies across the entire value chain, including AI semiconductors, AI data centers (AIDCs), AI models and AI services.<\/p>\n

Building on LLM development efforts since 2018, each consortium member contributed specialized expertise: Liner enhanced accuracy through expert-level information retrieval technology; SelectStar ensured reliability through large-scale data construction and validation; Krafton provided scalability from global multimodal R&D experience; 42dot strengthened versatility through its on-device AI technology; and Rebellions improved efficiency with domestically developed NPU technology.<\/p>\n

Already, more than 20 institutions, including major affiliates such as SK hynix, SK Innovation, SK Broadband, the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, have submitted letters of intent to participate. These institutions have agreed to utilize and validate A.X K1 together in real-world field settings.<\/p>\n

The consortium plans to release A.X K1 as open-source to companies across Korea\u2019s AI ecosystem. Through major developer communities and SK Telecom platforms, the consortium will provide open-source access and APIs to foster an environment for seamless AI agent development.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the consortium will establish an integrated support framework for AI model development and disclose portions of the training data used for model development through public and private platforms, boosting Korea\u2019s overall AI competitiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis marks a new inflection point in Korea\u2019s journey toward becoming one of the world\u2019s top three AI nations amid intensifying global competition,\u201d said Kim Tae-yoon, Head of Foundation Model Office at SK Telecom. \u201cAs Korea\u2019s leading AI company, we will continue driving our efforts to deliver AI for Everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2022 SKT consortium conducts Korean government\u2019s \u2018Sovereign AI Foundation Model\u2019 project with A.X K1, positioning Korea for Global Top 3 AI Powers \u2022 A.X K1: Korea\u2019s first \u2018Teacher Model\u2019 for smaller and specialized applications \u2022 SK Telecom realizes AI as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[504,497,474],"class_list":["post-2533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-release","tag-a-x-k1","tag-skt-consortium","tag-sovereign"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2536,"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533\/revisions\/2536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.sktelecom.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}